Vertigo

Scottie's (and Hitchcock's) perfectionist idealism has links to Hawthorne short stories like The Birthmark and Rappaccini's Daughter, and what a literary critic said of Hawthorne's work applies to this movie's sneaky queasiness: "It will work upon you like a very weak and very slow poison." But Vertigo also works on you more directly. Its romanticism may be land-mined, but it is romantic. Hitchcock knew how to create atmospheres in which offhand comments crackle. After Scottie has brought the post-dip Madeleine back to his apartment, undressed her, and put her to bed, he asks her if she's ever done this before. She responds with a "What?" that communicates: "Gone naked in a strange man's apartment? Or jumped into the bay?" And Herrmann's music has an extraordinary, plangent urgency that keeps Hitchcock's florid-in-the-best-sense approach from seeming overblown. Herrmann (who composed eight pictures for Hitchcock, including an unused score for Torn Curtain) said shortly before his death that Hitchcock "has little or no interest in people's emotions," that the director was only concerned with music's power to heighten suspense. For Hitchcock, he said, "One has to create a landscape for each film, whether it be the rainy night of Psycho or the turbulence of a picture like Vertigo." Actually, the wonder of Vertigo is that with the help of Herrmann, his stars, and San Francisco, Hitchcock was able to use his practical, thriller-honed craft to venture into surrealism and thereby capture emotional extremes (something he failed to do in Spellbound, even with the collaboration of Salvador Dali). It's that inward-outward, push-pull charge that gives the movie its pulse. The last 40 years of auteur criticism have convinced serious audiences that Hollywood directors could be artists. The reissue of Vertigo shows us is that even at his most artistic Hitchcock never ceased to be a showman.

Harris and Katz have a perfectionist reputation, but they're showmen, too. Most "restorers" merely locate an original negative (or even a well-worn dupe), clean it, strike new copies, and call it a restoration. Harris and Katz aim at something higher: nothing less than capturing for present-day viewers the magic a movie had on opening night. They will painstakingly repair an original negative that has faded and broken after hundreds of printings -- in effect, creating a new original negative (and new printing negatives in both 65mm and 35mm formats). Their quest to bring back a film's past glory can get as obsessive as Scottie's to bring back Madeleine; they conduct archaeological digs and oral histories in search of guidelines on everything from color shades to sound design. But their goal is healthy: to give moviegoers a chance to experience the full power of a classic, feeling it in their bones the way audiences did before it was ever dubbed a classic.

Harris and Katz's modest two-room headquarters at Universal has the jumping air of any new movie's command center. (The usual base for Harris' company, the Film Preserve, Ltd., is Bedford, N.Y.; Katz commands the Film Preserve West from Universal City. For Vertigo, Harris inspected the elements and came up with a game plan back East, then flew West to supervise the work with Katz.) Along with the expected -- strips of celluloid, stacks of film cans, and an inspection table where Harris can eyeball the goods -- their rooms are filled with relics of Vertigo as a theatrical production. Some are precious curiosities, like a version of the "Portrait of Carlotta" that features Vera Miles -- Hitchcock's first choice to play Madeleine/Judy -- and an advance publicity shot of Miles in Madeleine's clothes and makeup. (As Hitchcock famously told Francois Truffaut, "She became pregnant just before the part that was going to turn her into a star. After that, I lost interest, I couldn't get the rhythm going with her again.") Some are functional as well, like the green dress Novak wears as Judy, one of the touchstones for their color values (another: a circa '57 paint sample from Jaguar).

There's also a map of San Francisco spotted with pins next to a posting of S.F. settings and addresses: the Brocklebank Apartments at 1000 Mason Street, Ernie's at 847 Montgomery, the Empire Hotel at 940 Sutter, Fort Point on Marine Drive below Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Palace of Fine Arts, Mission Dolores, the McKittrick Hotel at the corner of Gough and Eddy, Podesta Baldocchi's at 224 Grant, Ransohoff's at 259 Post, and Scottie's apartment at 900 Lombard. The McKittrick was destroyed, and most of the businesses have moved, closed, or changed hands, but that won't matter to the Hitchcockians who've followed the restoration in periodicals or on the Internet and mailed in their own far-flung mementos, such as a 1958 theater schedule proclaiming a Vertigo run in rural Oklahoma.

Harris and Katz have designated one strip of wall their "Wall of Shame." When rights for a handful of Hitchcock's films (including Vertigo) reverted to the director, orders were sent out to destroy the three-channel masters (containing dialog, music, and sound-effect tracks) and related material in Paramount's possession throughout the world. The pair have copies of the sad sequence of letters commanding and confirming this aesthetic annihilation. (Put in unscientific storage were a mere eight 35mm and six 16mm prints.) Harris and Katz unearthed those letters after inspecting available materials for over a year; luckily, they decided they could use what they had to restore the film anyway.