Vertigo

Most film critics, when discussing the film Vertigo, seem to want to talk as much about Hitchcock's obsessions as those possessed by the central characters of his films. Which is, of course, interesting. But it's a critical study of Hitchcock rather than a look at the film on its own, without meanings that come from outside the story of the film. So Vertigo is used to expose Hitchcock's psychological defects as much as the central character's.
Without Hitchcock imposing his own personality on Vertigo is it possible to view the film as a story of a man obsessed with a woman so that he is tricked into believing she is dead when, actually, another woman is murdered? Of course it is. And I think the film is better for it. There is an innocence about Scotty, played brilliantly by James Stewart, that is lost when he becomes the replacement for the director. Gradually the innocence is replaced by anger until the man is deranged almost to the point of wanting to commit murder himself. The portrait is extremely subtle: first he tries to help an old college mate, reluctantly, to follow the man's wife who, the man tells him, believes she has been "taken over" by the soul of a dead woman, a dead woman who took her own life; he tells Scotty that he is afraid his wife is near suicidal herself. Scotty follows the woman, played in her own lusciously cool way by Kim Novak, and gradually falls in love with her. When he believes she has committed suicide and cannot help her because of his vertigo, he has a nervous breakdown. Can he recover from  this? He discovers a woman who looks exactly like the woman he loved and attempts to shape her to look like the woman he believes to be dead. But she is not dead. This woman he is shaping to his deranged will is the very same one he had previously followed and loved. When he finds out he has been all along deceived his derangement takes the form of madness: he wants the woman to pay for tricking him. Which leads to a fascinating and thrilling finale in which Scotty is a lost, mad soul who has now found the way to resolve the problem he had previously found left him unable to prevent a suicide - which, of course, never took place.
Brilliant. Slow moving but worth watching its every scene, every twitch of Stewart's face, every twist in the very intricate plot.
Recently it's been voted best film ever made by Sight and Sound magazine. I think I prefer Rear Window but it is better than most others not directed by The Master.

Cornell Woolrich

Who is (or, rather, was) Cornell Woolrich? Well, he was a popular crime writer in the 1900's,up there with Chandler so they said. He wrote heaps of novels (27) and short stories (hundreds) and some of his stories were made into films; indeed, 31 of them were adapted for the screen. I was surprised to discover that Hitchcock's "Rear Window" was adapted from one of his short stories - saw the film in Chapter Arts Centre this week and believe it to be Hitchcocks's best, superior to "Vertigo" which was recently judged to be the greatest film ever made by Sight and Sound magazine which, every ten years, draws up a list of the 10 - or is it 100? - best films made.
Another of one of my favourite films was an adaptation of a Woolrich short story: "The Window" which starred the ten year old Bobby Driscoll as a lad who went around telling porkies, tales that made people anxious only to find that the boy had made them up. It was a "cry wolf" kind of story because when the boy witnesses a real murder, no one believes him. It's a remarkable B picture,  a real thriller with an outstanding cast: Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale as the boy's parents and Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman as the killer and his wife.
Another of Woolrich's stories - a novel in fact - was made into a film, a 'film noire': "Night has a thousand eyes" with Edward G. Robinson. I must have seen this film. Surely I wouldn't have missed a film like this with an actor whom I admired more than Bogart - and that's saying a lot.
I have a collection of 12 of Cornell Woolrich's short stories and have just started one: "The Corpse next Door" about a man with a temper who is so enraged by the disappearance of his milk bottles every morning or so that he 's determined to catch the culprit; he does, and in a fit of rage, kills him. What does he do with the body? Well, there's an open door nearby - must be where the felon lives - so he drags the body there and dumps him in one of those beds that spring up against a wall..... I don't know what happens next but will soon find out. Great stuff. He wrote great stories but I'm afraid he is largely forgotten now. Pity.

Restless

Lavish praise from pretty well every TV reviewer for William Boyd's play called "Restless". And I have to admit I found it quite exciting: the pace was fast, heaps of action, the characters were well drawn and the acting was top-notch. And yet, and yet. In retrospect I find myself confused: there were so many parts of the story I simply didn't follow. Why did the heroine go to Holland? It seemed for no purpose since when she got there she was ordered to go immediately to Belguim. Why? To spy on an activity involving a German general's defection. Did she see it? Did it occur? No idea. Why did she crawl through a toilet window to escape - from what? And who was the bloke she spoke to and why was he chased and shot? Then suddenly, towards the end of the play, the heroine's daughter (in a later period) is interrogated by the police about the suspicious activities of her husband who soon turns up and then leaves. What was he supposed to be doing there in that play since he wasn't remotely involved in any of the action.
Phew!
I could go on since the play seemed to me to be full of holes and red herrings.
One of the reviewers referred to William Boyd as "the great William Boyd". On the strength of this play I would call him "the confused and confusing William Boyd".
I have the feeling that it was one of those adaptations of a novel which required the reading of the novel before seeing the play; maybe then one would be able to follow all the trails.
When I mentioned the author to an old friend of mine he said "wasn't he a cowboy?" When you're as old as us you'd remember William Boyd from short black and white films as the character Hoppalong Cassidy. Now there is "the great William Boyd".