Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic [Hardcover]

Dan Auiler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 1998

Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 psychological masterpiece Vertigo - in which obsessive ex-cop James Stewart pursues troubled loner Kim Novak through the streets of San Francisco and up and down the coast of California - is one of the most dissected, discussed, and revered films of all time. Now, for the first time, the story of this remarkable film is revealed. Writing with the full cooperation of the director's family, many crew members, and the film's restoration team, film historian Dan Auiler offers an in-depth re-creation of the making of Hitchcock's signature thriller. Through an extensive review of early script drafts, detailed interviews with the participants, and many archival materials, Auiler leads us down the winding path that brought this spellbinding and desperately romantic film to the screen. Scores of production notes, sketches, and storyboards - some in Hitchcock's own hand - are included, along with a generous array of stills from the film and its restoration.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Vertigo is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece and perhaps his most personal film. To view it once is to be devastated. With each subsequent screening, most viewers notice bits of business, depths of thought, and stunning ironies that had previously eluded them. Vertigo is a riveting experience, haunting its fans in the same way that Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is haunted by the mysterious Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak).

Upon researching the film, author Dan Auiler found that "this odd, obsessional, very un-matter-of-fact film was created" under "systematic, businesslike, matter-of-fact circumstances." His book gives us the opportunity to witness the construction of a film that seems at once amazing complex and absolutely seamless. He discusses the painstaking development of the screenplay (including its controversial explication of the mystery only two-thirds of the way through the film), the decision to cast Novak instead of Vera Miles opposite Stewart, the typically meticulous Hitchcock shoot, the film's amazing special effects and extraordinary credit and dream sequences, and the legendary musical score composed by Bernard Herrmann. Upon finishing the book, readers will appreciate the various contributions of Hitchcock, Herrmann, Stewart, Novak, actress Barbara Bel Geddes, Thomas Narcejac and Pierre Boileau (who wrote the book upon which it is based), uncredited scenarists Maxwell Anderson and Angus MacPhail, screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, cinematographer Robert Burks, editor George Tomasini, costume designer Edith Head, and many others. The book includes a list of cast and crew, an appendix discussing the VistaVision process in which it was shot, a forward by Vertigo enthusiast Martin Scorsese, and hundreds of production photos, reproductions of memos, storyboard sketches, and posters. Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic has enhanced even this avid fan's appreciation of a film he's long known and loved. --Raphael Shargel

From Publishers Weekly

When the newly restored print of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller, Vertigo, was released nationally to sold-out theaters in 1996, New York Times critic Janet Maslin called it "the deepest, darkest masterpiece" of the director's career. That couldn't have been obvious to those behind the scenes during the film's turbulent production four decades ago, according to Auiler, a film collector and teacher. In this splashy companion/study guide, Auiler traces the "matter-of-fact circumstances under which this odd, obsessional, very unmatter-of-fact film was created." He reconstructs the sometimes uneasy give-and-take between Hitchcock and his playersAactors Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes; screenwriters Samuel Taylor and Alec Coppel; Robert Burks and his second-unit cameraman who created the now-famous Vertigo effect (a forward-zoom/dolly-out shot); and Bernard Hermann, who composed the mesmerizing score. Interesting factoids abound, from details of the intermittent hospitalizations of Hitchcock and his wife for various ailments, to a list of inane titles suggested by Paramount executives unhappy with calling the film Vertigo; from information about a pop song of the same name commissioned by the studio but never released, to details of Novak's widely reported off-screen dalliances with Sammy Davis Jr. and the son of the dictator of the Dominican Republic. Interspersed throughout are sections of dialogue from the film, notes and memos from Hitchcock, an interview with the restoration team and more than 50 b&w photos and eight pages of color photos. This is a fittingly levelheaded history of a film whose dizzying complexity continues to fascinate.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (March 4, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312169159
• ISBN-13: 978-0312169152
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #794,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Auiler is the bestselling author of Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic (Kindle, 2011) and Hitchcock's Notebooks (HarperCollins, 1999). In addition to his writing and film work, he has taught for more than twenty years in the Los Angeles area.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, and graduate of Trinity University, Dan is considered one of the foremost authorities on Alfred Hitchcock and has made appearances on CNN and other major networks as an expert on Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and general film history.

For a collection of free images from the print edition, please go here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/writerauiler/VertigoTheMakingOfAHitchcockClassicExtras?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthy companion to Hitchcock's best film., May 8, 2002

By 

Andy Williamson (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic (Paperback)

Dan does a nice job here providing lots of information on the development of the script, the circumstances of the adaptation from the french novel, the shooting sequences, and the relationships of the actors and actresses once the camera stopped rolling.

Vertigo is my favorite film and I was generally pleased by this book. My only complaints concern numerous printing/spelling errors that I came across. These errors do not contribute to any misinformation about the film, but they are annoying. The reproductions of various movie posters and pictures from the set throughout the book are a nice addition. This book is a must for film buffs-especially Hitchcock film fans. Dan makes a convincing argument for the claim of many who say this is the master's best film. Hopefully some of the typographical errors in my first edition will be corrected in the future-nothing major, but enough to drop my rating one star.

Highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nine-Tenths of a Great Book- More or Less, September 5, 2000

By 

Sandy McLendon (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic (Hardcover)

As soon as I learned of Dan Auiler's book on the making of 'Vertigo', I bought it, and devoured it. I came away curiously hungry, and it took me about a year of ownership before I figured out what the problem was. Auiler has constructed his book on the basis of the production records that still survive, and they do give many insights into what was done when during 'Vertigo's' shooting schedule. What he didn't get- or give to us- were the interviews with surviving participants that would have fleshed out his calendar of events. There's not a word from Barbara Bel Geddes, and not any new info from Kim Novak. What I would have liked to see from this book was a definitive interview with Miss Novak about her experiences making the movie. How did she feel about this scene- or that one? What were the inner resources she drew on to find the characters of Madeleine and Judy inside her? Unfortunately, Auiler quotes only from extant Kim Novak interviews, and that sparingly. I realise that Kim Novak is perhaps the most difficult person to secure for an interview since Greta Garbo, but to have NOTHING new with her in a 'Vertigo' book meant to be definitive is a crying shame. There's also a certain skimpiness in the photo sections; there are some handsome frames from the 1996 restoration of the movie, but not anything like enough material showing shooting in progress. One nice touch is when Auiler shows us the actual hotel room used to plan the set of Judy Barton's room in the Empire Hotel; I wish he'd done this for each of the major sets, such as Ernie's, Scottie's apartment on Lombard Street, and Ransohoff's.

There is a way for readers to cure this book's problems; this book needs to be purchased along with a copy of the movie in letterbox format. At the end of the movie, there's a terrific little American Movie Classics special on the making of 'Vertigo'; it shows much of the photo material Auiler's book lacks, and has an interview with Kim Novak to boot. Novak's interview is short, but I got a lump in my throat when I saw what she was holding in her hands while talking- the original green knit dress she wore forty years earlier in the movie. The special also shows many of the original set drawings for the film, and some amateur 'home movie' footage of the shooting done at the mission at San Juan Bautista.

Despite my reservations, I do think that any Hitchcock or 'Vertigo' fan should definitely buy this book- but I think that AMC special on the video of the movie is the only way you'll ever get any of the info Auiler doesn't provide.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CLASSIC, April 28, 2002

By 

MOVIE MAVEN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic (Hardcover)

"Vertigo" is not only my favorite Hitchcock film; it is also one of my top five favorite films of all time.

It is a film that, at first viewing, seems merely like a slightly irregular, well-made, not quite formula murder mystery. You go away from the movie with doubts in your mind (questions keep pricking you over and over) and then the "Vertigo" vertigo starts: How did they do it? How did they get away with it and why? Why is James Stewart so obsessed with, at first, a living woman and then, tragically, a dead woman? Why does Kim Novak allow Stewart to manipulate her into becoming a different person? Why do the director and author tell the audience who-done-it long before the movie is over? (This is a particularly thorny point in Auiler's book). And those are only the questions which pop to mind after a first viewing with no preconceptions.

With a foreward (really a short appreciation of "Vertigo")by Martin Scorsese, Dan Auiler's book is a "Vertigo" encyclopedia: the author has collected color and black & white photographs from the film and from ad campaigns; he shows us reproductions of Hitchcock's famous storyboards; he has researched and explained how and why the screenplay was written (and by whom!)and lets us know how Hitchcock participated in the writing in this and everyone of his films and why the studio did not want Hitchcock to direct this movie, preferring that he do another African adventure after the success of "The Man Who Knew Too Much." We learn how Bernard Herrmann's score came about and was recorded, why the specific actors were chosen for their roles and how they worked with their director, how the movie was made ready for the public and how the public received it, originally and in its re-release. There is also a discussion of the process used in making VERTIGO which was called Vistavision.

Auiler also explains the process by which this great, sad, twisted, dark, mysterious, complicated, brave movie was saved from destruction by complete restoration, a painstaking process that directors such as Scorsese support and fund on a regular basis.

This book is a must-read for any fans of Alfred Hitchcock, of "Vertigo" and, indeed, for any film fans. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED