By Sam Tucker
This past weekend, we went through our normal daylight saving time routine, when we “fall back” an hour. I honestly don’t remember why we do this anymore, but it does bring a big change for those of us who call Charlotte home. Most notably, it marks the beginning of the two months of fall I get to enjoy every year! That’s right: cozy sweaters, pants, fire pits and the anticipation of the season ahead (without the foresight to realize it’ll be 80 degrees again in about a week).
However, the most important part of this transition is that we are officially starting my favorite movie month: Noirvember!
After trudging through the doldrums of Drive January, Anime April and even Spooktober, Noirvember brings more happiness, more intrigue and more movies to watch than almost any other month. And a great way to kick things off is by checking out another of Alfred Hitchcock’s classics: VERTIGO, playing at the IPH this month as part of its series The Anticipation of Fear: Alfred Hitchcock’s Essentials.
Those of you who have been following along might remember that I recently reviewed PSYCHO and gave it a very positive review, particularly for how well it holds up today despite being more than 60 years old. Well, VERTIGO is even older — it came out in 1958 — and it still confuses me that this one is in color while PSYCHO is in black and white … but I’ll leave that sort of cinematic history lesson to the major film critics.
VERTIGO is a fantastic story with some incredible performances, and it takes a twisty, almost reverse-gaslighting approach to its narrative. Even though the movie is nearly 70 years old, I’ll try not to get too deep into spoilers for those who haven’t seen it. At its core, it follows James Stewart as a San Francisco police detective who begins experiencing bouts of the titular vertigo while working a case that ultimately leads to his retirement. He then gets pulled into a mysterious situation that spirals into an almost Lynchian, dreamlike version of his own life, complete with doppelgängers, duplications, obsession and more than a few triple crosses.
Overall, it’s a great example of how the classic femme fatale story can be turned on its head. One of my favorite tropes in the genre is the clueless guy who gets in way over his head but keeps trying to figure everything out, even when the answers are staring him right in the face. And even as he tries to overcome his limitations, they continue to haunt him, making him question not only the people, new and old, in his life but also his memories and the things he thinks he knows.
Interestingly enough, psychological manipulation and deception have been around in film for decades, most famously in George Cukor’s GASLIGHT, which eventually gave us the modern term “gaslighting” — a piece of Gen Z slang thrown around so frequently, and often so incorrectly, that it’s almost lost its meaning. There’s something particularly interesting about seeing those dynamics flipped here, since it’s the police detective himself who ends up manipulated and duped in one way or another.
Now, watching this as a modern viewer, a few things don’t hold up quite as well. Some of the story feels a little predictable, some of the performances and dialogue get a bit corny, and there are moments when you can see the machinery of the plot working behind the scenes. But that doesn’t take away from the quality of the film, which is ranked second on Sight & Sound’s list of the best films of all time. It still has classic noir tropes, interesting narrative twists and a wonderfully unsettling atmosphere that make it an excellent entry into this fantastic month of movies.
So this Noirvember, head over to IPH, turn off your phone and enjoy a nice warm beverage while celebrating the start of this time of year with a little Hitchcockian paranoia.