The Green Fog
The Green Fog is an experimental film directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, that loosely revisits the plot of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo through a collage of found footage repurposed from old movies and television shows set in San Francisco.[1] The film was commissioned by the San Francisco Film Society for the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival’s and premiered at the festival's close on April 16, 2017.[1] It then entered limited release on January 5, 2018 and began to tour international festivals.The film features an original score by composer Jacob Garchik and Kronos Quartet.[2]
The Green Fog | |
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Directed by | Guy Maddin Evan Johnson Galen Johnson |
Edited by | Evan Johnson Galen Johnson |
Production company | Development Ltd. |
Distributed by | Balcony Booking (USA) |
Release date |
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Running time | 63 min |
Country | Canada/USA |
Language | English |
Festivals
The Green Fog was selected to screen at the following film festivals:
- 2017 San Francisco International Film Festival
- 2018 Berlin International Film Festival
- 2018 Hong Kong International Film Festival
- 2018 France's Cinéma du Réel festival
- 2018 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
- 2018 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Festival Internacional De Cine[3]
- 2018 South Korea's Jeonju International Film Festival
- 2018 Ukraine's Molodist International Film Festival
- 2018 New Zealand International Film Festival
- 2018 Greece's Thessaloniki International Film Festival
- 2018 BFI London Film Festival
Awards
The Green Fog was nominated for the C.I.C.A.E. Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2018, and has won the following awards:
Critical reception
The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reporting a 95% approval score from critics based on 22 reviews.[5] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from film critics, posts a rating score of 78 based on 10 reviews.[6]
While the film has not received any negative reviews, New York Times critic Ben Kenigsberg, noted Maddin's "slight arrogance in presuming that one of the greatest films of all time [Hitchcock's Vertigo ...] could be approximated, even a little, using clips from lesser directors" but also notes that "if trying to recreate a lost object of obsession from the materials at hand was Hitchcock’s subject, then he couldn’t ask for a more fitting tribute" and calls the movie " a marvel of film scholarship."[7]
Ty Burr, writing for the Boston Globe, called the film "eerie, witty, and unexpectedly moving" and compared it to Christian Marclay's installation film The Clock.[8] Critics also noted that, in addition to serving as a tribute to Hitchcock's Vertigo and a method of deconstructing its own self-critical aspects (which Maddin has discussed in interviews),[9] the film pays homage to the city of San Francisco and its stature in film history, serving as "a scrambled history of San Francisco told through moving pictures."[10]
References
- Eric Kohn (2017-04-15). "'Vertigo' Revisited: Guy Maddin Explores Hitchcock's Classic With Found Footage — SF International Film Festival". IndieWire.
- ""The Green Fog"". Balcony Releasing.
- ""The American Film The Green Fog, By Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson And Galen Johnson, Receives The Golden Lady Harimaguada"". Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Festival Internacional De Cine.
- ""'Roma' Named Best Film of 2018 by L.A. Film Critics Association"". Variety. 2018-12-09.
- "The Green Fog". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
- "The Green Fog". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
- Ben Kenigsberg (2018-01-04). ""Review: 'The Green Fog,' a Salute to Hitchcock's San Francisco"". The New York Times.
- Ty Burr (2018-07-18). ""Guy Maddin reimagines 'Vertigo' in 'The Green Fog'"". Boston Globe.
- ""Guy Maddin on Reinventing 'Vertigo' with 'The Green Fog,' Male Gaze, and the Bressonian Qualities of Chuck Norris"". The Film Stage. 2018-01-07.
- Justin Chang (2018-03-26). ""Guy Maddin's 'The Green Fog' is an ingenious found-footage homage to 'Vertigo'"". Los Angeles Times.