Thursday, March 28, 2024

Cannes Coup: Screen Legend Kim Novak Will Celebrate Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”

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The 2013 Cannes Film Festival just got really interesting. Guess who’s coming to dinner? Kim Novak. The siren star of the screen from the 1950s is a famous Hollywood recluse. Since she was on TV in the 1980s in “Falcon Crest,” Novak has been AWOL. She turns down all requests for interviews. But last year, she did turn up. oddly, complaining that music from “The Artist” was lifted from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” the most famous movie she starred in. Luckily, no one paid attention to that. Anyway, she’s coming to Cannes to celebrate “Vertigo.” Kim Novak and Jerry Lewis each in Cannes at the same time? Sacre bleu! PS Novak will attend the closing ceremonies. Very smart way to guarantee people stay til the end of the festival!

Kim Novak, Guest of Honour at the 66th Festival de Cannes

To mark the restoration of one of the masterpieces of world cinema, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the Festival de Cannes has invited its heroine, Kim Novak, to grace the event with her presence.

Novak will attend the screening of Vertigo, filmed in 1958, which will be shown in its restored form as part of Cannes Classics.

She will also take part in the closing ceremony for the 66th Festival de Cannes where she will award one of the Prizes on Sunday 26 May 2013.

Novak first attended the Festival in 1959 for the presentation of Middle of the Night by Delbert Mann (Palme d’or 1955 for Marty).

Her most memorable roles included the prostitute with a big heart in Kiss Me, Stupid by Billy Wilder, the witch in Richard Quine’s Bell Book and Candle and the adulteress in another Quine film, Strangers When We Meet. But Kim Novak’s greatest performance was surely as the disturbing  heroine of Vertigo, 1958 – Hitchock’s finest film, which he described as “a love story with a strange atmosphere.”

Of her role, Kim Novak said, “What was interesting was that the scene reflected what I was going through at the time: it was the story of a woman who was forced to be someone she wasn’t.” Unwilling to accept the iron rule of the studios, she left Hollywood prematurely in order to devote herself to painting.

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.
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