Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo has recently been voted best film ever by Sight and Sound. In my book, it’s been competing for the title with Disney's Snow White for years (granted, in a very different style).

For legal reasons, that film has been lost for decades after its initial release during which its moderate success disappointed the director. After the long hiatus, Universal (new owner of the rights after Paramount and Hitchcock himself) re-released the film in 1983, and in the nineties, Robert Harris and James Katz, who worked on the restoration of My Fair Lady among others, decided to undertake the restoration of the 1958 classic.

Unused take with blood on Jean Corbett

Through their efforts, they managed to restore lost elements of the film like a brief scene, when Judy first meets Scottie, she accepts his offer to a date that same evening. Their brief exchange during which she says "you’d better give me time to change and get fixed up” was abridged. It may have been cut for timing as censorship would have cut the previous line instead “I’ve been picked up before”.

They also unearthed the so-called “European censorship ending” (offered as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray) that Hitchcock probably never seriously intended to use in any versions, although Herbert Coleman wrote (in his book The Man who knew Hitchcock) that the director had his doubts about revealing the culprit before the ending right up until it was too late to return the copies already shipped to exhibitors. Otherwise, the flashback sequence would have been trimmed before release. As a matter of fact, this sequence proved the most problematic during the restoration as the elements for the introducing fade-in were lost.

And here we come to the negative elements of the restoration. All fade-ins and fade-outs are problematic in the film. Since the original elements were apparently lost, it was unfortunately chosen to erase them and start the fade-ins later and the fade-outs earlier. Meaning that some footage is lost. In short, instead of restoring the footage, they just erased it. Here's an example : 

They did, however, improve the overall visual qualities of the film, since the Vistavision system used to shoot the feature enable the film to be restored unto 70 mm film, making fine detail apparent such as Kim Novak’s bruises on her leg when she is carried out of the water by James Stewart.
Anyone who has seen the film knows how important Bernard Herrmann’s score is to the atmosphere and overall quality of it. So going back to the original session tracks to create a new 5.1 mix was an excellent idea. Due to a 1957 strike of musicians in the USA and the UK, the score had to be recorded in 2 different places (London and Vienna). So unlike his usual habit, Herrmann had to let his work be conducted by Muir Mathieson. And the Vienna cues were recorded in mono.

It is very difficult for any technicians working on the restoration of a work of art to decide when they are crossing the line between restoration and violation. In my idea, if Robert and Katz did a great job with the picture (albeit what I already mentioned), and although their original idea was excellent, I do not hold their treatment of the sound in very high esteem. For one thing, the all important music cues are at times slightly off sync. If it were obvious only to a fan like myself, it wouldn't be so bad, but in order to keep some of the dialogue (like James Stewart’s cry when going up the stairs) they had to keep snippets of the original mix (correctly synchronized), creating a brief albeit revelatory cacophony.

And although I love the score (available on CD), some moments were very disturbing. One of these was the church sequence where the cue is supposed to be some kind of diegetic music heard in the background to convey a religious atmosphere. In the new mix, the music has been given a boost, making its presence much more obvious and even intrusive. And the cue “The Park”, even though beautiful, was obviously deteriorated quite beyond what was necessary for a smooth listening pleasure. The final mix, although, not in stereo should have been used for a section of it, instead of a damaged original music session.The foley track creates another problem. 

Unlike the dialog, anything that could be replaced by a newly created sound was. The same process was applied with Psycho, though the help of a new technology that dissects the “DNA” of a mono sound track and enabled the restoration team to work more with original elements. Though the sound of a door knob can sound quite different to someone who knows the film by heart, the difference is not as jarring as the Vertigo mix. In the documentary about the restoration, they explain that they actually recorded the sound of the motors of the actual same cars seen in the film. While that sounds impressive, I was somewhat disturbed by how different the sound was during this many awkward moments. I feel that it would have been best to reproduce the sound of the film as it was, not as it should have sounded. Who are we to tell that Hitchcock wanted the sound of that particular vehicle? It could very well have been looped in post production for something completely different that somehow pleased the director.

Some elements were downright wrong : I read in the scriptgirl’s report that the bells of Mission Dolores were recorded especially on the day of location to be used for the tower scene (there is no bell tower at San Juan Bautista). The very famous final shot is now spoiled by an out-of-tune chime. Also, the thump heard when Madeleine hits the roof, although realistic, is quite different from the original. The film is now available on Blu-ray (part of box set) and a brand new 5.1 mix has been created that adresses these issues and others. The original soundtrack has wisely been offered as an option. I recommended it!
I also recommend Dan Auiler's fascinating book.

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Thats all for today folks!