The lesson for today is: Do not oversleep, lest ye become the victim of a perfidious city’s malfeasance. At 8:15 this morning I became a statistic, which says that within your first two months of living in Los Angeles, you will A) receive a speeding ticket; B) receive a parking ticket; or C) get into an accident. Of the three choices, the obvious lesser weevil is B, and for that I am grateful. How sad is that, I’m grateful for receiving a parking ticket…Now I’m guaranteed no accidents for up to a year, right? Well, not quite. And to think, I had it all planned out. Get up at 7:30, move the car. It’s all so simple the night before. But that doesn’t take into account the fact that you’ve never, ever been a morning person, and the very process of waking up takes more brain cells than you have at your disposal at such an early hour. Thus deprived of thinking power, the first instinct is not “Save $45!”, it’s “God bless the snooze button!” Alas and alack. Still, I maintain my position on so-called street cleaning; the fact of my ticket only exacerbates the issue.
I watched Vertigo last night, which was the first time I’d seen the whole thing through. The big revelation surprised me. The ending shocked me. Well, shocked in a modern viewer’s sense. It certain was apropos, and the whole film was a ball of wonder. The Hitch, he was a genius.
Watch the remastered film for the incredible VistaVision colour scheme that Hitchcock and his cinematographer, Robert Burks, used to underline the psychological characteristics. The entire film is foreshadowed by colour, and the palette of human emotions is visualized by sharp colour contrasts. The eerie blue-green of Judy Barton’s apartment, as illuminated by the joke-within-a-joke Empire Hotel sign, is a perfect indicator of Scotty’s obsession, his possession of Judy’s outward characteristics. The passionate reds, the guilt of gray, and the calm of beige (tied to religion, no less) are all spaced throughout the film with all the subtlety of a jumbo jet flying 400 meters above the ground. Yet it’s so intricately tied to the humanity of the story and the characters, that you end up noticing the shadow of the jet, rather than the jet itself. So masterful is the direction, so precise is Hitch’s devious translation of “pure cinema” into visual emotion, that we, the viewers, simply absorb it like sponges.
Yesterday it rained all morning. Remarkable. It was the first time I’d seen rain in over a month, and the feeling of walking through a light drizzle was a delight. This is in sharp contrast to Blacksburg, where nearly every afternoon was host to a thunderstorm, and every third morning a light drizzle commenced. Despite my love of southern California’s weather, I appreciate the occasional variation. Overheard a story of one woman complaining of the cold. When asked where she was from originally, she replied that she was from Minnesota. She lamented the fact that she was now assimilated to the point of forgetting her climate roots. I hope I never reach that point.