Just don't give me Vertigo

Rating: 10/10 (3 August 2012)

Some thoughts on the recent vote by that collection of pretentious nobodies called Sight & Sound critics. They've replaced Kane with Vertigo. Insane. While there may perhaps be about 5 films that are "better" than Citizen Kane, there must be at least 50 that are "better" than Vertigo, that farrago of zilch. One fairly interesting suggestion has been made that Kane is about Truth, where Vertigo is about Fantasy. For me, Truth is a million more times more interesting and much stranger than Fiction. Kane is a great, great film: creative, courageous, original, deep and gripping, mentally stimulating, superbly shot, written, acted. It tells you things about the world and yourself. It is youthful, vigorous and vital. Vertigo meanders along like superannuated sludge, baffling from beginning to end, telling you nothing. Incipient mental decay. Stewart is not too bad an actor; Bel Geddes is very good; and Novak is abysmal. All the actors in Kane are beyond excellent. But Charlie Kane is hard to take: the Truth hurts. Vertigo is merely soporific: a puzzle not worth solving.
Kane is about America, and the American Nightmare. Barbarity to Decadence, via Hypocrisy, without Civilization. Vertigo is about San Francisco, and the Flimsiness of Tinseltown. Sidling into Eventide. However, it is arguable that the theme of both films is an attempt to recover or re-discover the past. Blade Runner is more brilliant than either of them. The memories of the replicants are simply faked.
Here are a dozen films no better than Citizen Kane, but far, far "better" than Vertigo: Chinatown, The Seventh Seal, The Pianist, Un Flic, Breathless, Badlands, Once upon a Time in the West, in America, True Romance, The Hit, Hard Times, Sweet Smell of Success. I could easily think of forty more.