Today I remember why Dave Kehr’s Tuesday column is my favorite feature in the Times:
"Rear Window" is yellowish and grainy, and "Vertigo" has mysteriously shifted to a reddish purple. But the biggest problem is the completely factitious surround soundtrack that has been grafted to "Vertigo," a spectacular betrayal of Hitchcock’s intentions that I’ve come to think of as the "Rambo" soundtrack. With its ear-splitting gunshots and pounding footfalls, it sounds like a hastily dubbed Italian action film of the 1960’s rather than the muffled, dreamlike soundscape that Hitchcock created for the film.
Buried under the "language" option is a choice to use a mono mix that at least is closer to Hitchcock’s intentions, but sounds as if it were lifted from a 16-millimeter television print played through a transistor radio. These are not trivial alterations to a work of art as meticulously planned and executed as "Vertigo" - they alter the film’s meaning and impact, as surely as if someone had touched up "Guernica" with a can of red spray paint.
I’m not a Hitchcock fetishist like some, but it’s nice to see someone sticking up for the integrity of film exhibition.
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