• Home
  • Night of Deception
  • Short Films
    • A Cloud Holding a Knife
    • Love is a function of Death
    • Banality of Evil
    • 2 Yahoos and a bottle of Rum
    • The Here Between
    • Pale Side of Darkness
    • The Restroom
    • MetA-Romantic
    • By invitation Only
  • Photography
    • 21 Final Candidates for the 7 Wonders of the World >
      • Pyramids of Giza
      • Angkor Wat
      • Chichen Itza
      • Easter Island
      • Machu Picchu
      • Neuschwanstein Castle
      • Eiffel Tower
      • Acropolis
      • Taj Mahal
      • Alhambra
      • Petra
      • Roman Colosseum
      • Statue of Liberty
      • Hagia Sophia
      • Christ Redeemer
      • Stonehenge
    • 7 Natural Wonders of the World >
      • Paricutin Volcano
      • Grand Canyon
      • Northern Lights
      • The Harbor of Rio de Janeiro
      • Iguazu Falls
      • Amazon River
    • Natural Wonders of the U.S.A >
      • The Wave
      • The Racetrack
      • Yellowstone
      • Slot Canyons and more
      • Arches National Park
      • Bryce Canyon
      • Carlsbad Caverns
      • Badlands National Park
      • Canyonlands
    • Abandoned Places
    • Nature +
    • Faces
    • Interesting Places in USA
    • Interesting Places in Europe
  • Film Blog
    • Film Theory >
      • Women in Film Noir
      • Why do we have movie theaters?
      • Film Noir-Movement or Genre
      • How to understand box-office figures
    • Classic Films >
      • Touch of Evil
      • Citizen Kane - Overview
      • Citizen Kane - Firing of Leland
      • Citizen Kane - Declaration of Principles
      • I Am Cuba
      • Grand Illusion
      • Numbers and Language in "A Clockwork Orange"
      • JFK
      • Tout va b!en
      • Rear Window
      • "Vertigo" versus "A Man Escaped"
      • Meaning of 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
      • Network
      • Casablanca
    • Recent Films >
      • "The Matrix," freedom and Alice in Wonderland
      • Sweet and Lowdown
      • Taxi Driver
      • The Weather Underground
      • Lone Star
      • Cotton Club
      • From "Gimme Shelter" to "Spinal Tap"
      • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
      • Requiem for a Dream
      • The Elephant Man
      • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
      • Natural Born Killers
    • 21 Century >
      • Gravity
      • Blue is the warmest color
      • Spike Lee and the missing link in his "essential films" list
      • Kon-Tiki
      • The Place Beyond the Pines
      • Searching for Sugar Man
      • Killing them Softly
      • Silver Linings Playbook
      • Drive
      • Midnight in Paris
  • Best Films
    • The Best Films Ever Made
    • Best Noir Films
    • Best Neo-Noir Films
    • Best Comedy Films
    • Best Documentary Films
    • Best Western Films
    • Best Animation Films
    • Best Cinematography
    • Best Science-Fiction films
    • Best Screenwriters
    • Amazing Films
    • Best Film Directors
    • Best Experimental Films
    • Film Genres >
      • Gangster Films
      • Western Films
      • Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) Films
      • Woman's Film
      • Comedy Films
      • Nonfiction Films
      • Animated Films
      • Experimental Films
    • The Motion Picture Production Code
    • Film Quotes
  • Orson Welles
    • Rare pictures from "Citizen Kane"
    • Rare pictures from "The Magnificent Ambersons"
    • Rare Orson Welles pictures, awards and drawings
    • Rare pictures from "The Stranger," "Lady from Shanghai," "Hearts of Darkness," "It's all True," "Macbeth," and "Othello"
    • Rare pictures from Orson Welles Magic Show, Radio career and Theater productions
  • Cinema History
  • Contact
ilianFilm
ilianFIlm

"Vertigo" VS. "A Man Escaped"

3/24/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
“Hitchcock only finishes a picture 60 percent, I have to finish it for him,” says the composer Bernard Herrmann during an interview with Brown.

Even though I think that Herrmann’s statement might be an exaggeration, to some extent there is a lot of truth in it. Let’s imagine the famous scene from Psycho – the murder of Janet Leigh and the unforgettable violent sound of violins. How would the scene have felt without violins, as Hitchcock wanted initially? It would have lost its momentum, and the entire film would have left a completely different impression on the audience. 


Herrmann worked with other great directors such as Bryan De Palma, François Truffaut, and Martin Scorsese to name a few, but he’d never made such a statement for any of them as he did in Psycho.

I think Hitchcock is very clever, and so are many of his films. They are well made with some amazing tracking and crane shots. The sound is beautifully fit to extract the desired emotion from the audience. It offers various surprises during each film, and there is also the inevitable twist at the end. But…that is all they contain, all they are. Just clever… to me, anyway. 

In Vertigo, according to many the best film he ever made, there is beautiful cinematography with the exception of the scenes shot in front of the projector – James Stuart driving, or the love scene with Kim Novak at the bench, after the visit to the Sequoia Park. He operated with a lot of money, he could have shot them on a location and instead, he shot them in a studio. One would think that mediocre work would not satisfy him.

 So why is Hitchcock labeled one of the great ones? His case is a typical example that in a world of mainstream cinema the credit for a good picture can be given to many people. Sometimes, it may seem that the director’s achievement consists of choosing the outstanding talent to give life to a project, and he is merely the supervisor. Of course, that is not to say that the director has no contribution to the creative aspect of the film, but we all know, one man cannot make a film in Hollywood.

  Let’s take another film that is the exact opposite of Hitchcock’s films, in my opinion – A Man Escaped by Robert Bresson, which is not a suspense film. The title itself reveals the end of the film, and we don’t wonder what is going to happen, instead we focus on how it happened. 

The use of music in Bresson’s film is minimal – only a Mozart’s mass in several places throughout the film, and these places are when the main character Fontaine meets with other prisoners – Harold and Orsini. Since we know the outcome and there is no music, the audience is forced to listen. But that doesn’t lead to boredom where we just want the film to end. On the contrary, the image and the sound completely engage us and we pay attention to the smallest details, objects and gestures. Certain sounds are exaggerated – the German guards’ voices, the sound of doors being opened and closed, and handcuffs locking. All of that complements the story. Since the narration is in the past tense we know that the whole plot is happening in Fontaine’s head, and those sounds emphasize the pressure he feels at the moment. 

In the second half of the film the sound of a train is introduced, a sound that at the end has greater meaning. The whistle of the train and the noise of it passing by, builds up the suspense in the last scene, but also overlaps with the noises Fontaine and Jost make during their escape.

This film is on my list of 100 best and favorite films of all times. It conveys feelings and meaning through very elegant cinematography and sound.

A Man Escaped
Director: Robert Bresson
Staring: Francois Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock

Vertigo
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Staring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    People who critique moving pictures fall into 3 general classes:

    1.
    Reviewers - are generally journalists who describe the contents and general tone of a movie, with only incidental emphasis on aesthetic evaluation. 

    2.
    Critics - are also journalists for the most part, but their emphasis is more on evaluation than on mere content description. 

    3.
    Theorists - are usually professional academics, often the authors of books on how movies can be studied on a more philosophical level.

    Author

    I'm a film critic and I like to write about films that are exceptional and stand above the rest. 

    Categories

    All
    2011
    2012
    2013
    2014
    Classic
    Recent
    Theory

    RSS Feed

    "The role of the critic is to help people see what is in the work, what is in it that shouldn't be, what is not in it that could be. He is a good critic if he helps people understand more about the work that they could see for themselves; he is a great critic, if by his understandings and feeling for the work, by his passion, he can excite people so that they want to experience more of the art that is there, waiting to be seized. He is not necessarily bad critic if he makes errors in judgement. He is a bad critic if he does not awaken the curiosity, enlarge the interests and understanding of his audience. The art of the critic is to transmit his knowledge of and enthusiasm for art to others." ( Pauline Kael )
Photography
Best Films
Contact

All materials Copyright © 2025 ilianFIlm - All rights reserved.
No commercial reproduction, adaptation, distribution or transmission of any part or parts of this website or any
information contained therein by any means whatsoever is permitted without prior written permission.


© 2024 ilianFilm.com All Rights Reserved