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The Secret History of Vertigo by Wendy Powers and Robin McLeod
Although a more innocent face of Kim Novak than the one she used in 'Vertigo', it well serves to symbolize the story of 'The Secret History of Vertigo as Told by Judy Barton'. photo: courtesy K. Novak
Imagine Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece “Vertigo” (1958) re-told by its tragic heroine, Judith Barton, arguably the most-watched but least-understood woman in movie history. Generations of viewers think Scottie Ferguson tells us all we need to know when he sputters "You were his girl!" at "Vertigo"'s climax. But what if the Judy we’ve come to know, by the time Scottie levels his deadly "j'accuse," is neither Gavin Elster's mistress nor a willing accessory to murder?
Hitchcock was frustrated at losing the chance to film the French novel "Celle Qui N’était Plus" to director Henri-Georges Clouzot, who turned it into "Les Diaboliques", so he pinned his hopes on the next book by the authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, "D’éntre Les Morts", which roughly translates as "From Among the Dead." Boileau and Narcejac continued writing books through the 1980’s, though "Les Diaboliques" and "From Among the Dead" would remain their most famous because of the film adaptations.
As often happens in page-to-screen translations, Hitchcock's screenwriters had to condense the novel, and "D’éntre Les Morts" does indeed present a more complete picture of Renée Sourange, the Judith Barton character. Boileau and Narcejac's Renée is fully complicit in the antagonist Elster's plot to kill his wife because she's his mistress and wants to marry him.
“Vertigo” viewers asking why Judy participates in Elster's deadly plan might be told, “It's obvious—she’s his mistress in the original novel,” and they will probably agree. But all that remains of this motivation in Hitchcock's film is Scottie's gumshoe accusation in the movie’s final moments, that Judy was Elster's “girl.” She does not confess.
It's possible the screenwriters wanted us to shift our sympathies to the heroine in "Vertigo"'s last act, and made Judy softer and more vulnerable than her French counterpart. Indeed, in Hitchcock's later "Psycho" (1960), the narrative takes the risk that “Vertigo” considers but doesn't bet on: a similar shift in our identification from a "decoy" protagonist, Marion Crane, to the anguished, if homicidal, Norman Bates. But the changes made to the novel's character in the “Vertigo” screenplay are not reconciled with Judy's perceived complicity in Elster’s plot.
Another one of Novak's guises is also close to Judy's 'Secret History'. photo: courtesy K. Novak
While Judy's no innocent, and as we depict in our novel, "The Testament of Judith Barton" (2011) neither is she naive—as his mistress, she would have known she was part of a deadly plan. But Judy is not the hard-bitten film noir paramour of "D’éntre Les Morts", and we cannot see the tortured, heartbroken Judith Barton we meet in "Vertigo"'s third act as a willing accomplice to murder.
But most viewers are satisfied, like Scottie and the film itself, with objectifying Judy. As long as she looks the part, nobody on either side of the screen seems interested in who Judy really is and why she does what she does. One night while watching "Vertigo", and Judy in particular, very closely, we got extremely interested in her side of the story. Our novel, "The Testament of Judith Barton", excerpted below, tells her tale.
The Testament of Judith Barton
Prologue: Twin Peaks
It would’ve been easier if I’d become his mistress.
He walked me out of the hotel’s opulent lobby, into its cobbled courtyard. We’d gone out for drinks, and the martinis we’d had in the bar were going to my head, if not to his. “Shall I call you a taxi?” he asked, his hand on the small of my back. Before I could answer, he waved one over.
A yellow-and-black inched forward from the queue. I could feel the eyes of the cabbie on me, moving up and down my body, drinking in my skin, the fabric of my dress and what was underneath.
Gavin Elster leaned into the driver’s window, whispered a few words, opened the rear door for me – and followed me in.
“Judy, I’ll accompany you home,” he said with his predictable assurance. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, wasn’t it? My head was spinning, I shouldn’t have had that second drink.
Here is Kim in Hitchcock's second version of Judy, as a friend of Scottie, but becoming Madeleine. photo: courtesy K. Novak
I lived only a few blocks away. It would have been just as easy to walk, and maybe safer than the situation I was in now. At least the foggy chill would have cleared my head. But here in the warmth of the back seat, with Elster’s left hand resting lightly on my shoulder, I was almost drowsy.
The taxi tipped sharply down Powell Street, but where the cabbie should have turned right on Sutter to take me home, he kept going down to Market.
“Oh, we should have turned there,” I protested, only mildly, I confess. I could see where we were going.
And we did turn right, eventually, on Market, near the cable car turnaround. For every block we drove, Elster’s hand slipped another inch down my arm. We made our way up Market Street, past upscale stores and banks closed for the night, neon-lit movie theatres, bums and sailors. Ladies in hats and white gloves, no older than I at twenty-five but protected by the rings on their fingers, were hurrying home along the wet sidewalks.
The soft lights of San Francisco, signals blinking on the dark asphalt, shimmered over the misty streets like some mirage … only by now I was too intoxicated with the warmth of the drinks and the swaying taxi, and too conscious of his roaming hands, to notice.
He was discreet. In his mirror the driver could not have seen the hand brushing along my breast, or the other sliding smoothly up my calf. “Call me Gavin,” he said with equal fluidity. He kept his face an appropriate few inches from mine, and kept his talk small. I didn’t stop him yet.
“I’ve asked our driver to take us for a little tour before taking you home. Not that far, I promise, only up the next hill.”
Now Kim is advancing into another realm deep within Judy's psyche. photo: courtesy K. Novak
We were crossing Castro Street, now winding up Market to the top of Twin Peaks. His left hand had found my knee, pushed the fabric of my skirt aside, and was working its way up my leg as steadily as the taxi’s engine pushed up the hill. By the time we reached the summit on the twisting road I was a little dizzy. He had found the top of my stockings, and the bare skin underneath.
I thought about his wife. Then he brought her up.
“The Indians had a story about these two mountains,” he said as casually as if his hands were in his own lap. “They said the mountain was one at first, a couple united in marriage, but they argued so much that the gods split them in two.”
Like I said, he was discreet. Gavin Elster was more than clever enough to allude to one thing while pursuing another.
My eyes had closed, so I didn’t quite know where we were. But my body was waking up to one skillful hand under my sweater and the other under my skirt, so I hardly noticed the gentle bump when the taxi stopped.
The driver was catching on. “I’ll go for a smoke, if you don’t mind,” I heard him say through the dark. He might have added, “The meter’s running.”
So was mine. I’d let Elster take me this far, and I admit I enjoyed his attention and finesse, but I hadn’t decided what I wanted. He obviously had.
He planted his smooth, insistent mouth on mine, though the hairs of his mustache bristled sharp against my lips. Then his tongue was at my earlobe, alternately kissing it and whispering, his breath whistling in my ear.
“When the Spanish adventurers passed here, they called these two peaks ‘Los Pechos de la Chola,’ he said, his voice so close it heated my skin. “The breasts of the Indian maiden.” Now both his hands had found their way under my sweater, and were kneading at the fabric of my brassier. “But her breasts are no lovelier than yours, Judy,” and he leaned down to kiss one – “No more perfectly rounded” – then the other – “or full…” his lips moving back and forth between them.
Kim finally and fully the femme fatale of Hitchcock's Madeleine. photo: courtesy K. Novak
I pulled him up by his shoulders and nipped at his ear. “But if the Indians thought the peaks were man and wife, what happened to the husband?” I cooed, playing the coquette. “Where had he gone, by the time the Spanish came?”
He let out a deep sigh that clouded the back seat with the mingled aromas of vermouth and expensive cologne that I could already smell on my skin.
“Ah. Perhaps he ran away, his wife hectored him so. But she could not possibly have been as beautiful as you, or he would never have left.”
He pressed his flattery with more long minutes of squeezing, groping, and intense kisses, as I submitted and resisted, seduced and reluctant.
“Judy, I’ve been so unhappy,” he murmured. “My wife, she is so … devout, so cold. If anything ever happened to her…,” his tongue tickled my ear, then his lips pushed in to whisper: “You could be… the second Mrs. Elster.”
He had miscalculated. Such talk about his wife, rather than arousing any sympathy in me, jolted me to my senses. I did remember what my upbringing said about adultery. I would not be his concubine.
I wrenched myself out of his arms and clambered out of the taxi, my sweater askew, a stocking falling down, stumbling on a dangling heel. I needed air.
A painting by Kim Novak, who has painted her entire life and recently had a show at the San Francisco Museum, entitled 'My Life, My Choice'. image: K. Novak
A chilly breeze blew back the fog, and I saw where I was – high above San Francisco, nearly its tallest point, three times higher than any peak I’d climbed at home. I saw the whole city, and it saw me, half undressed, its lights winking at me through the mist. And there was Elster’s breath on my neck, and his hands on my shoulders.
I whirled on him. “What do you think I am, some girl in a French novel?”
No. I was a girl from Kansas, still finding my way in this dizzying city of fog and hills.