my favorite movies of 1958:

(1) Vertigo

(2) The Music Room

(3) Elevator to the Gallows

favorite of 1958:

Vertigo

(James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.)

Some say this is the greatest movie ever made. Others dispute that it’s even the best Hitchcock movie. But it’s at least his most exquisitely beautiful movie.

Kim Novak talked about her performance in Vertigo as a meta-commentary on being an actress (in an interview by Roger Ebert):

In a way, that was how Hollywood treated its women in those days. I could really identify with Judy, being pushed and pulled this way and that, being told what dresses to wear, how to walk, how to behave. I think there was a little edge in my performance that I was trying to suggest that I would not allow myself to be pushed beyond a certain point. … I know that Hitchcock gave me a lot of freedom in creating the character, but he was very exact in telling me exactly what to do — how to move, where to stand. I think you can see a little of me resisting that in some of the shots, kind of insisting on my own identity.

Ebert expanded on that:

[Vertigo] is about how Hitchcock used, feared and tried to control women. He is represented by Scottie (James Stewart), a man with physical and mental weaknesses (back problems, fear of heights), who falls obsessively in love with the image of a woman. … When he cannot have her, he finds another woman and tries to mold her, dress her, train her, change her makeup and her hair, until she looks like the woman he desires. He cares nothing about the clay he is shaping. …

Ebert added that Vertigo’s “emotional threads come together in the greatest single shot in all of Hitchcock,” which “may be the one time in his entire career” when he “completely revealed himself, in all of his passion and sadness.”

The leading man and woman (Stewart and Novak) give phenomenal performances, both embodying fascinatingly complex and subtle characters. At the same time, Hitchcock movies are great not only because of dynamite starring roles, but also because of supporting actors like Barbara Bel Geddes who play more ordinary people. Her interactions with her old flame, Jimmy Stewart’s character, add levity to keep the movie from getting too ruminative. Sometimes Vertigo becomes so ethereal and mystical you feel like it could almost drift away into the air, but Bel Geddes brings it back down to earth. I particularly love the small moment of grace in her last line of the movie, in a hospital where they’re treating Stewart’s trauma with “musical therapy” (having him rest while listening to peaceful classical music), when she says with meaningful but unappreciated concern: “You want to know something, Doctor? I don’t think Mozart’s going to help at all.”

Speaking of being unappreciated, it took a while for audiences to come around to Vertigo. It didn’t win any Oscars, and wasn’t even nominated for any except in two technical categories (Best Art Direction and Best Sound). Wikipedia quotes some of the “mixed” reviews at the time, e.g. the New Yorker grumbled that Hitchcock had “never before indulged in such farfetched nonsense.” Hitchcock believed the initial response was tepid because people were put off by the age gap between Stewart and Novak, who are supposed to have a romance when he’s twice her age — and yes, the movie might be more enjoyable if you overlook that awkward aspect.

But I’ve been watching and loving this movie since I was very young, and it never gets old. All the different dimensions of Vertigo — the story … the acting … the words … the visuals … and the music, oh, the music! — come together to make one of the very best movies I’ve ever seen.

(How to stream Vertigo.)

 

2nd favorite of 1958:

The Music Room

[Bengali: Jalsaghar]     জলসাঘর

(Chhabi Biswas, Padma Devi, Pinaki Sen Gupta, Roshan Kumari. Directed by Satyajit Ray.)

What Sunset Boulevard (my top choice of 1950) is to Hollywood, The Music Room is to real estate. A landlord clings to his past greatness while languishing in his decaying mansion. As his fortune dwindles, some of his few remaining comforts — and some of the highlights of the movie — are the private concerts he hosts at his estate. This is a must-see for anyone with a taste for Indian classical music.

Pauline Kael called The Music Room an “extraordinary study of pride carried to extremity” and a “great, flawed, maddening film — hard to take but probably impossible to forget.” The movie is sometimes choppily pieced together, so even if you usually avoid spoilers you might want to read Ebert’s review to get a sense of the overall plot arc before watching it.

Here’s a video analysis of The Music Room — “What Makes This Movie Great?” (from Learning About Movies, a YouTube channel by Dr. Josh Matthews)

Stream The Music Room on the Criterion Channel (with bonus features). If you don’t subscribe, try a free 14-day trial.

 

3rd favorite of 1958:

Elevator to the Gallows

[French: Ascenseur pour l’échafaud]

(Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin. Directed by Louis Malle.)

In an essay on “watching women walk,” Imogen Sara Smith says:

The film that fully established [Jeanne Moreau] as a star is Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (1958), and its centerpiece follows her character, Florence, as she wanders Paris all night alone, searching for her lover, Julien (Maurice Ronet). (They were supposed to meet after he carried out their plan to murder her husband, but he got trapped in an elevator when the power was shut down.) The sequence is famous for Miles Davis’s score — an exhalation of peerless cool that blows through the film like a night breeze — and for the cinematography by Henri Decaë, who broke ground by using only available light from streetlamps and store-windows. But Moreau’s presence is so expressive that the music seems to emanate from her (Davis, in fact, improvised as he watched the footage), and the grainy shadows and hazy smears of light seem to be filtered through her numb, shattered exhaustion. As she moves toward the camera, at times she passes in and out of focus, suggesting the drift of her mind between sharp pangs of anxiety and trancelike despair. …

At first her steps are brisk and purposeful, but as she fails again and again to find news of Julien, she starts to move more slowly, more aimlessly, muttering to herself so that passersby eye her suspiciously. She reaches out to touch parked cars as she passes, lightly caressing one in which she saw a man she fleetingly mistook for her lover. Her eyes begin to look slightly mad, gazing inward. … She is alone in her anguished absorption, drifting haunted and unseeing through a world that has become senseless. …

Here’s Miles Davis recording the soundtrack while watching the movie:

Stream Elevator to the Gallows on the Criterion Channel (with bonus features) or Max.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.