Midge's place ...

Looking at VERTIGO once again on Blu-ray is  a revelation - like those other Hitchs on Blu, its the music that grabs one - those great scores by Bernard Herrmann - here, and in PSYCHO particularly, they add so much more to the film ....  but now VERTIGO has something else for me: another Apartment We Love - Midge's place - is it  studio? is there a bedroom? overlooking San Francisco. Its just too divine and like Kate Hepburn's fancy New York apartment in DESK SET, or the Harrisons' swish London one in THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE or Jack Buchanan's so tasteful  (pure Minnelli) town house in THE BANDWAGON or of course the perfect mid-50s house created for NORTH BY NORTHWEST - we want to live there. 

I particularly like the ideal little kitchen area where Jimmy Stewart's Scottie makes some coffee - so compact with those ideal shelves and all one would need ...... Barbara Bel Geddes too creates one of Hitch's most sympathetic second female leads as Midge, just like Suzanne Pleshette in THE BIRDS or Diane Baker in MARNIE.

Even reading how the scene where Kim jumps into the bay was shot does not spoil the mood - it was actually a stand-in for that shot, and he jumped into parachute material, and the shot of Kim in the water was a tank shot, so nobody was actually in the ocean - movies, how we love them !