Jason Blum on Vertigo: Alfred Hitchcock Possessed Me

This essay is certainly one of a number of contributed by filmmakers and actors as a part of Selection’s 100 Greatest Movies of All Time package deal.

What I’ve all the time beloved about films is the best way one can take over your mind for 2 hours in a method that no different medium can. I’ve by no means been as possessed by work or music or books the best way I’ve been by films. And no film has possessed me with such precision and craft and depth as “Vertigo.”  

That the film is itself about somebody being possessed by his personal unusual obsession makes it all of the extra spectacular. In actual fact, one of many issues that I so admire amongst filmmakers I’ve labored with, whether or not it’s Evening Shyamalan, or Jordan Peele, or David Gordon Inexperienced, is the best way they use instruments of cinema to point out a personality’s want, even (and particularly) when that want is inscrutable to me personally. I’ll by no means know what it’s wish to, say, desperately have to get away from an abusive boyfriend or desperately must be an ideal drummer. However in “The Invisible Man” and “Whiplash,” with Leigh Whannell and Damien Chazelle exploiting each cinematic device out there to them, I one way or the other perceive this want. Nor have I ever been obsessive about an icy and distant blonde. However it’s, perversely, that want that makes “Vertigo,” and the entire greatest thrillers, so scary: If an viewers doesn’t perceive characters’ needs, it received’t be terrified by the scary obstacles blocking the trail to the article of that want. By the top of “Vertigo,” want piles upon want and it appears just about each character is obsessive about one another and none of them will ever have their needs happy. And but each time I watch “Vertigo,” my very own want — to be moved, to be misplaced in one other actuality for 2 hours, to be scared — has been higher fulfilled than by some other film.   

Jason Blum is the producer of “Get Out” and “The Purge.”