Book Vs. Film Comparison: D'entre Les Morts Vs. Vertigo

BOOK VS FILM Brian Light the European market in the 1940s. In col- (From Among the Dead) with the director in laboration, they instead created a new strain mind. Hitchcock was quick to dispute this: t a 1948 awards banquet of mystery fiction focused on the victim or “No, they didn’t. The book was out before in Paris honoring Thomas collaborator in a crime, exploring the we acquired the property.” Dan Auiler con- Narcejac (Pierre Ayraud’s psychology, motivations, and actions as that firmed this in an interview with Narcejac for nom de plume) with the Prix character struggles through dire circumstance. his exhaustively detailed book, Vertigo: The du Roman d’Aventures, given Boileau would construct the diabolical plots Making of a Hitchcock Classic. Narcejac Ato the year’s best work of detective fiction– and Narcejac would craft the complex char- said they never intended to write a story for French or foreign, the author was introduced acterizations. The partners had one règle de Hitchcock; the idea was sparked in a French to the 1938 winner, Pierre Boileau. Both of jeu: the protagonist must never wake from cinema as Narcejac watched a newsreel and their acclaimed novels were “locked room” the nightmare. believed he recognized someone he’d lost mysteries, a subgenre of crime fiction origi- Their first collaboration wasCelle qui touch with during the war. nating from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1841 short n’était plus (She Who Was No More) in “After the war,” he explained, “there story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” 1952. In his landmark interview, Hitch- were many displaced people and families—it Boileau and Narcejac shared an immedi- cock/Truffaut, Truffaut suggests that when was common to have ‘lost’ a friend. I began ate connection, not only through mutual Boileau and Narcejac learned Hitchcock to think of the possibilities of recognizing admiration—both writers felt trapped in had tried to acquire the rights to their first someone like this. Maybe someone who was their formulaic “locked rooms.” Neither book (adapted by Henri-Georges Clouzot thought dead. … and this is where D’entre was inspired by the American “hardboiled” and released in 1955 as Les Diaboliques) les morts began to take shape.” The novel school of fiction, which had infiltrated they wrote their third, D’entre les morts came to the attention of Paramount, and 61 NOIR CITY I NUMBER 22 I filmnoirfoundation.org Alfred Hitchcock consults with the authors of D’entre les morts — Thomas Narcejac (left) and Pierre Boileau (right) Hitchcock, in the form of a plot synopsis Hitchcock was famous for so thoroughly in November 1954. When Les Diaboliques storyboarding each scene he rarely (if ever) significant variations from the source novel, became a movie-house sensation in 1955, looked through the camera viewfinder on which begins in 1940s France as German Paramount acquired the rights to D’entre set. But for this film, his preparation and forces threaten its borders. The movie elimi- les morts. Hitchcock told Truffaut what meticulous attention reached new heights nates the book’s oppressive cloud of conflict drew him to the story: “I was intrigued by of fervency. Prior to the creation of a shoot- and wartime occupation by shifting the story the hero’s attempts to recreate the image of ing script, Hitchcock and associate producer to the late-1950s California. Hitchcock dis- a dead woman through another one that’s (and all-around right-hand man) Herbert missed an early draft by playwright Maxwell alive.” The English translation of the novel Coleman scouted locations in and around Anderson and hired Alec Coppel (already D’entre les morts, retitled The Living and San Francisco, a city Hitchcock loved. The under contract to Paramount) to take a the Dead, released in the U.S. in April 1957. shift in period and location were the first fresh crack at it. Coppel had adapted his The director already had Vera Miles in own novel for the claustrophobic Brit-noir mind for the role of Madeleine. He had The Hidden Room (aka Obsession, 1949), recently directed her in the debut episode of one of two films directed by Edward Dmy- his television series, Alfred Hitchcock Pres- tryk in England during his U.S. blacklisting. ents. “Revenge” was a taut tale of a woman Together, Coppel and Hitchcock devised the who becomes emotionally unstable after being opening rooftop chase to explain the source raped. Hitchcock was so impressed by her of the detective’s titular phobia. performance he cast her again the same year Having already made three films with opposite Henry Fonda in his underrated neo- Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart was the obvious realist thriller The Wrong Man (1956). Hitch- choice to play Roger Flavières (renamed cock was convinced his next feature would Scottie Ferguson in the film). Stewart—a cre- make her a major star…but it was not to be. ative partner on the film—expressed concern During preproduction, Hitchcock was beset about the surreal tenor of the developing with health problems and twice went under script and felt that it was essential to have the knife, each recuperation period pushing at least one aspect of the plot rooted in real- back the film’s schedule. In the interim, Miles, ity. Hitchcock hired a native San Franciscan, who was married to Tarzan hunk Gordon Sam Taylor, to further retool the script. Tay- Scott at the time, became pregnant with their lor created Midge (played with sly reserve by son Michael. After some deliberation, Kim Barbara Bel Geddes), an old college friend to Novak was cast, even though she was under whom Scottie was previously engaged. There contract to Columbia. A deal was struck in is no such character in the novel. Midge is which Harry Cohn agreed to lend the actress a warm but overly maternal companion, a for Vertigo’s production in exchange for pointed contrast to the mysterious, alluring Stewart starring (again with Novak) in Bell, An early test photo of Vera Miles, Hitchcock’s first Madeleine. She is the film’s grounding touch- Book and Candle (1958). choice to play Vertigo’s Madeleine Elster stone. Hitchcock’s typical modus operandi filmnoirfoundation.org I NUMBER 22 I NOIR CITY 62 Vertigo’s opening credit sequence by Saul Bass draws the viewer in through the “mind’s eye” Designer Saul Bass in his workshop was to extract the essence from the source and then fades back into the pupil, drawing for their aesthetic potential since they material and weave his own distinctive story us into “the mind’s eye.” Bass incorporated were mainly seen as scientific expres- around it, making it very much his own (e.g.: original images from French mathematician sions. You could say I was obsessed Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, Psycho). Jules Antione Lissajous for this sequence. with them for a while—that I had But in this case, he followed the novel with His collaborator, avant-garde filmmaker fallen in love with them—so I knew unwavering fidelity. His imprimatur for this John Whitney, skillfully set them in motion, a little of what Hitch was driving at. film—its visual texture—directly referenced creating the hypnotic effect. As Jennifer Bass silent movies, which he considered the pur- and Pat Kirkham detail in Saul Bass: A Life Adding another layer of emotional com- est form of cinema. “Dialogue should simply in Film & Design, Bass wanted to convey the plexity is Bernard Herrmann’s score, which be…something that comes out of the mouths vertiginous disequilibrium associated with references Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, specif- of people whose eyes tell the story in visual obsessive love. Of the forms themselves, ically the Leibestod, or love-death passage of terms.” He typically employed to great he elaborated: the tragic opera. As Steven C. Smith notes in effect what he referred to as the “subjective A Heart at Fire’s Center, The Life and Music treatment,” an alternating pattern of shot/ I did not invent them, they already of Bernard Herrmann: “Vertigo is Alfred reaction shot, which he used to heighten existed, but were not fully recognized Hitchcock’s most uncompromising film, suspense. In Vertigo, this technique forms the principle structure of the narrative, intensify- ing our identification with Scottie’s obsession, which ultimately leads to psychosis. The film immediately pulls the viewer in with a title sequence designed by Saul Bass. Hitchcock began his career designing intertitles for silent movies, and he always displayed a keen eye for film’s graphics. The first image that appears on-screen is an isolated mask-like face (no less than seven of the titles originally suggested for the film contained the word “mask”). The title— Vertigo—slowly emerges from the pupil of the eye. In her essay Woman as Death: Ver- tigo as Source, Barbara Creed connects this image to two René Magritte paintings, The False Mirror (1928) and The Eye (1932/35). In Hitchcock on Hitchcock, the director acknowledged surrealism as “An influence that I experience myself, if only in the dream sequences and the sequences of the unreal in a certain number of my films.” Then a series of swirling spirals—a pattern repli- cated throughout the movie—emerges from On the set, Alfred Hitchcock deadpans for the crew while Bernard Herrmann catnaps 63 NOIR CITY I NUMBER 22 I filmnoirfoundation.org and Bernard Herrmann’s fullest realization book to the letter, right down to the novel’s root. In the novel, the reader is trapped in the of his favorite themes: romantic obsession, bifurcated structure. confines of Flavières’ internal monologue, as isolation, and the ultimate release of death.” Flavières/Scottie meets with an old col- he sinks in deeply: “…he had made up his Paramount initially hired Jay Livingston and lege friend, Paul Gévigne/Gavin Elster (Tom mind to follow Madeleine week in, week Ray Evans to compose a theme song for the Helmore, though Everett Sloane was briefly out, for months if necessary.

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