Year of Release: 1958Country of Origin: USA
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes
Plot outline: A San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her (IMDb).
Adapted from French novel Sueurs froides: d'entre les morts (Cold Sweat: From Among the Dead) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, this is the movie that competes with Rear Window to get to the top of Hitchcock's best works. Even though Vertigo is essentially a tale of sexual obsession, it can be viewed from many different angles: a love story, a detective story, a character study of an obsessed man and a supernatural thriller. While it lacks the humour of some of Hitchcock's other masterpieces, it is filled with complexity and suspense. Hitchcock uses splendid visual detail, calculated tempo and superb musical scores by Bernard Hermann to produce a mysterious atmosphere. The tension rarely lets up and the audience is completely caught up in it. As almost every moment is filled with significant detail, the movie repays careful attention. James Stewart is outstanding in a role far different from his usual screen persona. He enables the audience to sympathize with him, even as he does very strange things, e.g. he insists that Judy dress like Madeleine, walk like her, colour the hair like her, even wear the same hairstyle like her. Kim Novak is thoroughly convincing in a difficult double role. She switches from Madeleine's refined beauty to Judy's rather vulgar looks, speech and demeanour seamlessly. As a result, this is the ultimate role Novak will always be remembered for. Barbara Bel Geddes is excellent as she provides important insight into Stewart's character. While the performances of the lead stars are memorable, the music plays a very important role here. As the movie has the least dialogue compared to Hitchcock's other movies (most of the first half and a great deal of the second half are without dialogue), Stewart's growing obsession is solely told through his facial expressions and Bernard Herrmann's haunting musical score. In 2004 director Martin Scorsese described the qualities of Herrmann's musical score: "Vertigo is about obsession, which means that it's about circling back to the same moment, again and again ... And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfilment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for — he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession." My favourite scene is the extended segment (mostly without dialogue) when Stewart follows Novak for the first time. Nothing much happens, but the atmosphere is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat (!) Vertigo is a virtuoso piece from Hitchcock and a movie that will no doubt continue to inspire other filmmakers over the years to come. Vertigo is number 2 in my favourite list.
My judgement: **** out of 4 stars
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