Deauville Festival Honors Kim Novak, the Affable Ghost of "Vertigo"

In Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo ( Vertigo, 1958), Kim Novak was that girl, the brunette Judy, who agrees to play a diaphanous fake Madeleine to fascinate the detective-spectator Scottie (James Stewart), destined to become the duped witness of a murder disguised as a suicide. Crossing her by chance in the street, he gives her a makeover according to the simulacrum he has been playing with: bleached hair, a chignon, rose gold makeup, a gray suit. This was also the way producers did things at the time, on the lookout for platinum blondes, sometimes wringing them to death.

Having inadvertently entered the cinema, Kim Novak resolutely left it at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, with a few exceptions. At 92, she was in Europe these days, first at the Venice Film Festival, then at the Deauville Film Festival (which continues until September 14), where we met her. Our legs are a little shaky before we see Madeleine, the very ghost of cinema, as we approach the Hôtel Le Royal, which takes on a gothic turn: the sky darkens and seagulls squawk to the soundtrack of Hitchcock's The Birds .

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