Although Vertigo is very much not a forgotten film, I think it's not unreasonable to describe D'Entre Les Morts, the book on which Hitchcock's masterpiece was based, as somewhat forgotten. It was originally known in the UK as The Living and the Dead, although my copy, published in paperback for Sight and Sound almost thirty years ago, has the title Vertigo and Hitchcockian cover imagery.
The authors were Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, and the translator Geoffrey Sainsbury. Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a long-time fan of Boileau and Narcejac and I find it amazing that some of their books still have not - yet - been translated into English. They were brilliant at coming up with memorable and often macabre ideas.
They were also very economical writers. My copy, a small edition, runs to a mere 170 pages. No wasting of words with these two Frenchmen. The story is quite bleak, more so than the film in my opinion, and there are some differences. The changes Hitchcock and the screenwriters (Alec Coppel and Samuel W. Taylor) made to the narrative were highly effective, elevating it to the status of a screen classic.
That said, the book is a good read in its own right. The protagonist is Flavieres, a former police officer, and after his old pal Paul Gevigne asks him to keep an eye on his wife, the ex-cop gradually develops an obsession about the woman. But it's a destructive obsession. A dark story, then, but gripping from start to finish.
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