Orpheus: The Tale I Never Heard

This flick was pretty jaw dropping. During several moments in the film, I caught myself staring at the screen with my mouth literally open, most often during the underworld scenes. The whole movie sets you up to wonder the the heck is going on behind the mirrors in this secret world. I could more or less come close to knowing what to expect on the other side because of the story intro that a classmate provided before we viewed the movie. But I'd be curious to watch the movie without having any background of the Orpheus story.

I wanted to address some certain matters of plot and time and motivations to better understand why things happened and all that. For example, towards the beginning when "Death" is with the drunk Cegestes, had they been hanging together long before that? It's an odd thing to wonder, but he's driving around with her so I wondered where their little relationship began. And similar to that, at what point did Death decide she wanted/loved/liked Orpheus? She seemed to be into poets, but he didn't really do anything poetic that would imply he's anyone special. Had she eyed him up before? Why didn't she immediately make him her underworld puppet? Does Death know all? Perhaps she looked at him and she knew all she'd need to know. Of course you could say, he's hanging out at the Poet's Bar (wasn't it called something like that?) so he must be important in the writer's community.

I was a bit thrown by a comment later in the movie about Orpheus having been in Death's bedroom. I assumed it was meant that the bedroom he's placed in when Cegestes is being taken to the underworld is her bedroom, but I would have assumed her bedroom to actually be in the underworld. Or was that where the house was? But that wouldn't explain why they needed to go through the mirror with Cegestes.

One truly weird thing that I just couldn't get was how often Heurtebise seemed to try to urge Orpheus to take care of or pay attention to his wife, when it seemed as if Heurtebise was digging her himself quite a bit. He was a bizarre character, constantly surprising me. Right from the get go when he's first talking to Eurydice, when he fumbles up his speech and mentions he's already dead, I forget the exact quote. He did things that I just didn't expect.

Are we to assume also, that Orpheus's permission to enter the underworld while still alive is based on his status as an artist/poet? Poets are special people, hence Death takes a fancy to him? And he's granted all the attention from Heurtebise and a seemingly increasing access to all of the happenings of the underworld because of this? Speaking of that scene where he first travels to the underworld, I think that scene jumped out at me as the most "homosexual". That sounds bad. I'm not sure how else to put that but it sounds bad. Anyways, I don't think there was any intended love connection between Orpheus and Heurtebise, but just seeing the one man float and the other bounce around like he's walking on the moon with the wind blowing definitely brought it to mind. Plus the scene just seemed surreal which added to that feeling. I'm not sure if it was on the way to or back, but Orpheus also put his hand on the shoulder of Heurtebise, which again, added to the general feeling of that scene.

Quick note about the special effects, mainly the backwards/forwards effects. The whole glove putting on actually being them being taken off was great. Seems simple enough, but it's obvious that it's just playing backwards, so you can look into a bit more to see what it might have meant to do it like that. On one hand, I think it was a sign of the start of the going back in time process to before Death arrived and took control of things. Sure at that point, it was up in the air for the audience as to what might happen, but it was a turning point I think. On another hand it could imply the backwards nature of the underworld, how different it is from the living world.

And we talked about this idea of 'who is the hero' exactly. Orpheus? Not so much. Death? Eh. I thought Heurtebise seemed to shine in that role the most. For being a chauffeur and subservient most of the time, he seemed to show the most special powers (haha) and seemed to know what was going on all of the time, or at least be able to control things a bit better that anyone else. Towards the end when Death has him reverse time to get things back to normal, I got the impression that Death herself wasn't strong enough to do it. She may have 'ordered' him to do it yes, so maybe I'm wrong.

And finally, let's talk about this notion that poets and the artistic folks are possessed by some evil that gets in their minds and forces them to spew and create all of these artistic pieces. I think the whole Cegestes broadcasts from the Underworld lend itself to this idea pretty tightly. Someone did bring up that the broadcasts started before Cegestes passed over; that is just weird. Orpheus is so wrapped in, almost in a trance over these broadcasts and I think (correct me if I'm wrong) it was the these broadcasts that he turned into his own writing. And the broadcasts were actually Cegestes earlier works or something. Then you have a community of people seeing the potential evil in this artistic man, thinking he had something to do with the Cegestes disappearance. It plays well on the types of reactions to the writers/artists that people used to give, thinking some evil had penetrated their minds and forced these words out of them.

Oh yeah, that's awesome that hey had to incorporate gloves into the film because they were putting their hands into mercury for the 'entering the mirror' effect.

Vertigo: Obsession, Dolls, and Hell

This is a movie I'd like to see again. I had never seen it before though I'd definitely heard of it. I think every time I heard the movie title in the past, I thought of the zodiac sign 'Virgo' for some reason. That's irrelevant really but I thought I'd shed some light on my random misinterpretations.

This movie reeked of obsession. What started out as an "Okay, I'll follow your wife around for a while and see what she does", quickly turned into a creepy romance with the close watching and ultimate contact between John 'Scottie' Ferguson and Madeleine Elster (whom we find out to be Judy Barton at some point in the film). Ferguson was a cop for what I'd assume many years, so his ability to follow somebody is in his blood by this point, so it was easy for him to tackle to task. You could tell he was intrigued from the get go when Elster's outings were shown to be peculiarly random, but once he's forced to interact with her at the bay almost-drowning scene, it all went downhill for him, as far as the scopaphilia was concerned. You can tell he's feeling something for her, but I wasn't sure if he was really into her, or into the idea of figuring her out.

One way to examine it is in the title of the movie. One definition of vertigo states "a dizzying sensation of tilting within stable surroundings". If you take away Ferguson's actual Vertigo (which I'm not saying wasn't an integral part of the story), perhaps being in the detective's shoes was his stable surrounding, since he'd done it for so long, and the dizzying sensation was this obsession with fake Madeleine/Judy. Once he solves the riddle when the two clash, he's able to overcome the vertigo. Perhaps the stable surrounding and dizziness meet at a middle point where something better can endure, something more pure. But then she leaps to her death so who knows.

But about this scopaphilia. The whole idea of watching someone for pleasure, like an object, brought images of someone playing with a doll to my mind. You can stand far away and above a doll, sometimes making it do what you want, but other times letting it have a mind of it's own and living in it's own world which you might secretly follow from behind. All the while, no matter how much freedom it possesses, it's still living within the constructs of your world. Ferguson strives to recreate this doll-like image of Madaleine in Judy when they embark on their relationship. Step by step, she's pieced together, from the hair, to the clothes, to the make-up; he's making her into the doll he's come to love from watching her throughout the streets of San Fran.

As a completely different ending note, I'd like to say Midge was very creepy. I think she was fine when she was the only one in Scottie's life, able to listen to his ongoing thoughts etc, but once that was threatened, something clicked in her mind that sent her over the edge a bit. The painting she did was ridiculous as was the late night visit to his apartment after fake-Madeleine left where she says "Well now Johnny-O, was it a ghost, was it fun?". Without the late night drive-by, the painting could be seen as a humorous gesture, but in combination with the drive-by, it just shows how unstable she really was. Which is odd since she seems to be pretty grounded for most of the movie otherwise. This speaks loudly about the idea that you never know what someone might be thinking, even though they seem a certain way on the outside. I think her "plain jane" look contributed to this effect. And I don't doubt that the red sweater and red glasses were a mistake either, since she was the devil, hoping Scottie would come back to her hell secretly, and permanently. Like the devil she can't make him sell his soul to her, but she certainly wants it.

No Blog for "Laura"

I had planned on doing a blog for every film even though we don't need one for every single film we watch, but I had to miss this past week's discussion on "Laura", so I decided to not do a blog this week.

The Third Man - Shadows, Angles and Vampires

After finishing The Third Man, I realized that I was into the movie the entire time but by the time it ended, I didn't love or hate it. That's not to say there weren't things I liked about it, the class discussion, or the reading. I think in combination with all of those aspects, it brought my interest to a level of overall enjoyment.



During my own viewing of the movie, the angles jumped out at me as something interesting and worth noting. It seems strange that tilting the camera could help a movie since it seems movies are so technical and precise sometimes. But it worked well for this movie, creating and showing differences between people. Sometimes it felt like it was shown during moments of important information passing from one character to another. Or if one person was asking a question, it might be tilted. I especially liked the scene on the ferris wheel between Harry and Holly. I'm sad to say I kind of got 'lost in the sauce' during their dialogue there because I was trying to focus on the tilting motion of the cart. It seemed to tilt downwards on the person whose point wasn't being made. If Harry had the upper hand or was explaining something, it seemed to put him on the higher side, and vice versa. Simply put, it was a great scene, as we get a great look at and insight into the character of Harry, already fascinating enough being played by Welles.



I had made a note in my notes about 'chasing shadows' because there was a few times where that happened. I think it goes hand in hand with something someone said in class and also the reading, about Harry being compared to a Vampire. The person in class mentioned the shadows in regards to a world we don't know exists, the underworld of that era, with crime etc. Also, the world of a Vampire you might say. I never even thought of the comparison until the reading, but now I can see it. You know, this man Harry, traveling by night, feeding on the blood of the world (the deaths he causes), living in a shadow world. It's an amazing connection that struck me as awesome, and no, not because Vamps are currently trendy. (although True Blood is a pretty cool show)