© William Ahearn 2007
With the possible exception of “The 39 Steps” or “Psycho,” Alfred Hitchcock always found a peculiar way to screw up bringing a good book to the screen. Since writing about Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” here, I’ve been on the lookout for D’entre les morts translated as The Living And The Dead and written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. The volume I found had been re-titled Vertigo as happens in the age of synergy.
Truth be told, I was looking to find validation for my theory of the film. While I didn’t – yet I am convinced that what I wrote is exactly what the films means – I did find a far darker and far more satisfying version of events if you’re going to buy into the traditional interpretation of the film.
The book takes place in wartime and the protagonist, Flavières, is a bitter former detective who hated the police and the police department and was up on a roof chasing a criminal when a patrolman fell off the roof and died while trying to save Flavières. In some ways the film follows the novel – and in an important way it fails to translate the ambience of the book. The friend, Gévigne, does hire Flavières to tail Gévigne’s wife, Madeline, because she is acting strangely. While Flavières is a far darker and miserable person than Scotty of the film, he wouldn’t think of a cavorting with a friend’s wife even though he is falling in love with her.
And like Scotty in the film, Flavières runs when whoever it is goes off the tower.
It takes years for Flavières to find Renée Sourange, the Judy Barton of the film. By that time, Gévigne is dead. Yet the obsession burns just as brightly. And Renée is just as empty a character as Judi although Renée actually has a life of sorts, something Hitchcock didn’t allow Judi Barton.
If there is another aspect of the book that succeeds more than the film, it is the ending. No matter what interpretation of the film one believes, it’s difficult to accept the cop-out ending of the movie. A clumsy divine intervention is never satisfying and rarely believable.
Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac wrote their ending to D’entre les morts with the passion and the guts it required. Hitchcock didn’t end “Vertigo”; he just stopped it. If you can find the book, get it. My eye is out for more of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s novels.