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dinsdagavond gezien op DVD: Vertigo (1958) van Alfred Hitchcock

In 1996 is Vertigo gerestaureerd en sindsdien is het meesterwerk van Hitchcock in opgepoetste versie op DVD verspreid. Een waar genot om James Stewart en Kim Novak in 1957 door de straten van San Francisco te zien rijden. Snapshots van alle auto’s die je in Vertigo ziet rijden én geparkeerd ziet staan, zijn overigens op het web te bekijken met merk, type en jaargang erbij vermeld!

vertigo
James Stewart en Kim Novak
Scottie Ferguson is een politieagent uit San Francisco die door zijn hoogtevrees met pensioen is moeten gaan. Een oude vriend vraagt hem of hij zijn vrouw Madeleine kan volgen: zij is geobsedeerd geraakt door haar verleden. Scottie begint haar te volgen en raakt verwikkeld in een ingewikkeld plot.
 
Bron: moviemeter.nl
vertigo
De nachtmerrie van Scottie (James Stewart) in Vertigo is prachtige jaren vijftig psychedelica met duidelijke invloed van het beeldverhaal
Saul Bass (1920-1996) was not only one of the great graphic designers of the mid-20th century but the undisputed master of film title design thanks to his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese.
 
When the reels of film for Otto Preminger’s controversial new drugs movie, The Man with the Golden Arm, arrived at US movie theatres in 1955, a note was stuck on the cans – “Projectionists – pull curtain before titles”.
 
Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to reveal the screen once they„d finished. But Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film.
 
The movie’s theme was the struggle of its hero – a jazz musician played by Frank Sinatra – to overcome his heroin addiction. Designed by the graphic designer Saul Bass the titles featured an animated black paper-cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm. Knowing that the arm was a powerful image of addiction, Bass had chosen it – rather than Frank Sinatra’s famous face – as the symbol of both the movie’s titles and its promotional poster.
 
That cut-out arm caused a sensation and Saul Bass reinvented the movie title as an art form. By the end of his life, he had created over 50 title sequences for Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, John Frankenheimer and Martin Scorsese. Although he later claimed that he found the Man with the Golden Arm sequence “a little disappointing now, because it was so imitated”.
 
Bron: designmuseum.org

vertigoessay | Vertigo [ en.wikipedia.org ] | Dodge 1957 | Kim Novak