[slade]

Welcome Alisha, great post!

Here's the info on "mickeymousing".

"Some filmmakers insist on purely descriptive music-- a practice referred to as mickeymousing (so called because of Disney's early experiments with music and animation). This type of score uses music as a literal equivalent to the image. If a character stealthily tip-toes from a room, for example, each step has a musical note to emphasize the suspense" (from Understanding Movies, Eighth Edition, by Louis Gianetti, 1999).

I loved the music in the film. I thought it did a great job of creating tension, where there otherwise wouldn't be any. For example, when Scotty looks at Carlotta's tombstone, it wouldn't have even registered as significant if it weren't for the music at that point. Indeed, the entire following sequence in that first part of the film is sustained by the score. It goes on for well over ten minutes without any dialogue, but the score keeps it edgy and alive. Without that tense music there, be it mickeymouse or not, that sequence would be very dull.

Alisha said, "On another note, how about that Pink Floyd-esque stuff in the film? Very bizarre. Any explanations or interpretations of that?"

You're meaning the psychidelic swirls in the opening credits and Scotty's dream, yes?

These are mentioned in the documentary on the DVD. The creator of them for the title sequence was just going for a confused, dizzying look--to portray the virtigo of the movie, and more particularly Scotty. I don't think they are intentionally psychadellic as this movie came out about the same time LSD was invented, and so it was still very unknown.

Interesting that they remind you of Pink Floyd--The Wall is very much an album (I'm less familiar with the movie) about losing one's mind (Roger Waters had a couple of stays in psychiatric hospitals). And, losing one's mind is definatley a part of Vertigo as well.

One last thing here, then I'll shut up. I'm wondering about the editing of Vertigo. I'm very much a part of the MTV generation, I fear, and found the pace of Vertigo to be slow at times. While I enjoyed the suspense of the pacing, it just seemed to much. This was really pronounced for me tonight--I just finished watching The Pledge--another psychological thriller. It is a slow paced movie that definatley uses its pacing to twist every little bit of anxiety out of each scene. It's almost stressful to watch the movie becuase of it--and I was never bored. So, I guess what I'm wondering is: why is that? Why did the slowpacing of The Pledge work for me as it should while the slowpacing of Vertigo bored me a couple of times? Did Vertigo's pacing bore anyone else at any point?