![]() The sets Novak as Madeleine or Judy drifts through, from the luxurious scarlet of Ernie’s Restaurant to a market overflowing with flowers, have evidently been crafted by Hitchcock at his most scrupulous. If there is a sexual obsession behind the camera, it is then made all the more prescient by the quality of the picture. With the crispness of 4K, the disparity is much starker, jarring the viewer with lustful fear. There is undoubtedly a sickness to the shot in Vertigo, but one of far richer implications for Scottie’s mental instability. The scene in the latter film comes when the central relationship is breaking down, using turquoise to create a slightly nauseating sense of unease. As John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson (James Stewart) observes the outline of Kim Novak’s face silhouetted against sumptuous blue-green neon, the mind races forward to Mia and Sebastian (Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling) duetting ‘City of Stars’ in a similarly lit room in Damien Chazelle’s 2017 musical. But here we have an intense thriller with themes of voyeurism, duality and tragedy – a transitory piece from the steely monochrome of film noir into visual sensuality, or ‘film couleur’, if you will.Ĭonsidering which films director of photography Robert Burks has influenced further reveals the contrast between theme and image. It is a cinematographic achievement one might expect of Robert Yeoman in any Wes Anderson picture, or in the sun-drenched modernity of La La Land. ![]() Audible collective gasps filled the auditorium at scenes we believed so familiar, awed by the sheer colour of the film. Of all the old celluloid prints being cleaned and sharpened to a mighty 4,000 pixels, this is surely the most gorgeous. Now Park Circus (the folks behind the new 4K restoration), aware that their audience has probably mulled all this over a thousand times, are asking us to do something a little different – to simply look at its lavish surface. Since its release 60 years ago, academics and critics have tried (and failed) to dissect the plot and spill out Hitchcock’s predatory subconscious. In 2012, it usurped Citizen Kane as Sight and Sound’s “greatest film of all time”, but with this superlative label comes an expectation for absolute meaning. Alfred Hitchcock’s lofty thriller is back on the big screen in time for its 60th anniversary.
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