Nothing had any real meaning except the spring leaves in the sunshine – and love.” Some in France, like the industrialist Paul Gevigné, stand to profit from the war but others, like his old university friend Roger Flavières feel they are living on the edge of an abyss. The book opens in a period called ‘the phoney war’ when people in France wait uneasily for the hostilities that seem inevitable. From Among the Dead is set against a background of World War 2 and the ugliness of war deepens the sense of displacement created by the plot. More significantly the historical context is eradicated from the film version.
Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac set From Among the Dead in Paris and Marseilles but Hitchcock went for San Franscisco, presumably because its relative proximity to Hollywood made it more economical. The plot of the film is essentially the same as that of the novel though the characters’ names are different and Hitchcock makes far more about the vertigo suffered by the protagonist. I’ve watched the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo several times but never realised that this tale of mental disturbance and obsession was based on a French novel called D’Entre les Morts (translated into English as From Among the Dead).
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