If you know anything at all about classic movies, you know about Kim Novak. She was one of the last actors to be molded for stardom under the old studio system, and she had such an unhappy time being set up as a rival to Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth that she walked away from Hollywood in her early thirties. Her time since has been spent painting and caring for her animals, and now she is still here in her nineties, she has decided to open up about her feelings and her experiences in ways which perhaps the world wasn’t previously ready for. This is by no means a hard-hitting documentary, and it does not delve in any way into material about which its subject is unhappy. But director Alexandre O. Philippe has allowed someone whose image was never in her own control to present herself exactly as she wants. And that’s important and valuable indeed.
The stories about the past are illustrated with clips from Ms. Novak’s career, showing off the silly lines and tight-fitting dresses that the men in charge of Hollywood saw as her worth. But Ms. Novak was smarter and more capable than that, although she was rarely allowed the working environment to do her best. And you’ve guessed from the title that there’s a big focus on the emotional impact of the film Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece about identity, obsession and the ways we control those who we love. It’s pretty heavy stuff, and Ms. Novak had to play a dual part as two women whose identities were both subsumed into other people’s ideas of them. For someone who felt her own identity (starting with her name) was subsumed to Hollywood’s idea of her, it’s obvious why this could be so affecting, and how her work on the movie has shaped Ms. Novak’s life even now. The discussion of mental health is indirect but pervasive and it’s clear that the attempts to reconcile her feelings and her choices continues.
And yet we learn nothing of Ms. Novak’s personal life – not her marriages, and certainly not the relationship with Sammy Davis Jr. that was ended by force – and only a little of her career as a painter, though many paintings are shown off and discussed. Her paintings have a gauzy, windswept style, full of hidden faces and swooping manes of hair, a big contrast to her modernist home on a rocky cliff overlooking the Pacific. But we also learn that Ms. Novak still has her costumes from Vertigo, most notably the important gray suit which remained in its tissue wrapping until Mr. Philippe coaxed her to open it up on camera. Watching someone confront their past is always fascinating and it’s great to know that Ms. Novak can enjoy hearing her talents discussed on her own terms at very long last.
Kim Novak’s Vertigo recently played at the London Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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