where can I download Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac text reading without registering read acquire
where can I download Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac text reading without registering read acquireBook description
Book description
For any good cinephile the standard line is that on its way to the screen Vertigo (1958) radically transformed its original source material, the (relatively) obscure French mystery novel written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, most commonly known by the portmanteau moniker “Boileau-Narcejac.” This transformation directly resulted in what many feel is not only Alfred Hitchcock’s most deeply and intensely personal film, but one of the greatest films of all time. This is more or less what I expected, but it is not at all what I got.What I discovered instead was an extremely interesting psychological mystery, and nearly all of major plot points and narrative events included in Hitchcock’s film originated within its pages. As some research demonstrated, I’m not the only one to feel like Boileau-Narcejac’s has received a critical short shrift. As Peter Lev writes in a thoughtful consideration of the connection between novel and film: “D’entre les morts is a thoughtful and innovative work of mystery fiction that deserves study both in its own right and as the precursor to the film Vertigo.”* I highly recommend Lev’s essay and some other scholarship that has emerged on this topic for deeply considered analyses, but for the sake of a review I offer several cursory thoughts and observations.[Technically some of what will follow could be considered spoilers, though this shouldn’t be an issue for anybody who is even cursorily aware of the film’s plot.]To begin, the commonalities: the aforementioned similarity in the basic narrative and plot, the central character of a former police detective (named Flavières in the novel, Scottie in the film) who becomes obsessed with his client’s wife, as well as the name of “Madeleine,” who becomes the object of Flavières/Scottie’s desire and obsession. It is this last attribute that most immediately interests me, as it nicely evokes what Carol Mavor (who is herself invoking the ideas of the late, great Chris Marker) describes as “the Proustian inflection of Scottie’s pursuit of Madeleine in Vertigo.”** For reading the novel after seeing the film–which is, I presume, the case with the vast majority of the novel’s reader’s today–is to experience involuntary recall, with memories of the movie’s lush imagery constantly materialize with a potency attributed to the madeleine by the narrator of À la recherche du temps perdu. But for me this is far from a bad thing, but instead creates an ideal site where a film and a literary text can and should be read as being in dialogue with each other, and a consideration of this type in turn reveals a number of insights, gaps, and resonances that can deepen and complicate understanding of both texts.Because more than the similarities, what fascinated me most were the elements that appear in one text but not the other, as these often were the things that would often open up unexpected vistas of possible meaning. A particularly good example: D’entre les morts is overtly intertextual in a manner the film never is. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice figures prominently in the narrative–so much so that Flavières’s affectionate pet name for Madeleine becomes “little Eurydice” (I had never considered Vertigo as an explicit retelling of the Eurydice myth. It seems so obvious now). It also references the cinema at a key point as well, as Flavières “rediscovers” his Eurydice when he glimpses her on a larger-than-life movie screen after he aimlessly wanders into a Parisian theater one afternoon. Considering that Vertigo is often characterized as an implicit meditation on cinema itself, it is interesting to note that these seeds seem to have (at the very least) been planted in the original novel. On a completely different level, while Vertigo is a depiction of one man’s obstinate descent into obsessive desire, the novel uses these personal experiences to explore the larger social trauma experienced by the French during WWII, which is perhaps why it leads to a darker conclusion than Hitchcock dares (though on a dramatic and emotional level, the film’s conclusion is far superior). This review has amplified the novel’s strengths; I could further explicate the many areas where the film exceeds Boileau-Narcejac’s vision (the dream-logic of the narrative, the general oneiric quality it evokes, the representation of space, the creation of the supporting character of Midge to form a heartbreaking love triangle, etc.). Vertigo was crowned “the greatest film ever made” in the most recent Sight & Sound poll, and there’s a reason for that–it a legitimately great film, yes, even one of the great films. And this is a level of distinction that Boileau-Narcejac’s novel never comes close to achieving itself. But just because it’s not one of the all-time great mystery novels doesn’t at all detract from the fact that it’s very, very good. And this is something Hitchcock scholarship has tended to downplay–often to the point of deliberate obscuration–but much like the story of “the sad Carlotta Valdes” or her textual equivalent Pauline Lagerlac, in any consideration of Vertigo Boileau-Narcejac’s novel lingers like a mysterious specter, implying backstories and whole alternative histories that might well be repressed, but never fully erased.*Collected in The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation**Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion of Camera Lucida, La Jetee, Sans soleil, and Hiroshima mon amourShe was dead. And he was dead with her.
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