We end our study with a film that creates a modern Hitchcockian protagonist – and one that elicited strong negative reactions from many critics. Andrew Garfield’s behavior is classically inflected; he stalks women much like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, and instrumentalizes them like Cary Grant in Notorious… but in a new context the behavior seems abhorrent. Garfield’s wrong-time status is affirmed within the narrative of the film, but for some people even self-critical works can still come off as indulgent.
Does Garfield’s performance reveal anything new about the “problematic” protagonists of older films? And does the reception (or subtext) of this movie indicate that it is time to lay these characters, themes, and aesthetics to rest?
Required:
David Robert Mitchell, Under the Silver Lake. (Film)
Mitchell's followup to the critically and commercially adored It Follows was critically disfavored (receiving a tepid response at Cannes) and commercially dead on arrival. After Cannes, the typically supportive distributor A24 delayed the movie for months before dumping it in two domestic theaters for 6 total days and then pushing it to video-on-demand.
Lawson, Richard. “Under the Silver Lake Review: To Live, Die, and Annoy in L.A.” [online] Vanity Fair.
Richard Lawson's review emblematizes some of the negative response to the movie's festival review. There are a few broader aesthetic critiques, but the review hones in on the "bad male bullshit" of the protagonist, speculating as to how that might reflect on the filmmaker or the presumptive audience.
Cvetkovich, Ann. “Postmodern Vertigo: The Sexual Politics of Allusion in De Palma's Body Double,” in Hitchcock's Rereleased Films: From Rope to Vertigo. Ed. Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1991. 147-62 (PDF, emailed)
In a measured defense of bad male bullshit, Ann Cvetkovich ponders the aesthetic value inherent in translating a canonized problematic object like Vertigo into the present moment. While she is writing about De Palma's Body Double, which brought the Hitchcockian protagonist to the Los Angeles of the 1980s, a similar chain of logic can be applied to Mitchell's efforts to bring the same protagonist to the Los Angeles of the 2010s in Under the Silver Lake.
Optional:
Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo. (Film)
Hitchcock's Vertigo is now probably his most renowned film, seen by many as his ultimate statement on both voyeurism and the power of cinema to manufacture illusion. While it was initially a box office flop with unimpressed reviews, many filmmakers (including Brian De Palma and Park Chan-wook) have cited it as the primary inspiration behind their decision to make movies, and critics have also rediscovered it over the years.
Brian De Palma, Body Double. (Film)
This movie is like if Vertigo was bad. Or, at least, a little less good.
Happy reading, all. Recall that we will go until 7:45 with lecture and discussion this week, since it is our last class and we will not be screening a new film. We will call it there and all go on our merry ways. Looking forward to wading into our trickiest discussion yet.
-D/S