Paranoid thriller

Rating: 9/10 (27 September 2009)

Considered by many to be Hitchcock's masterpiece, I found this tougher going than I expected. James Stewart plays John 'Scottie' Ferguson, an ex-detective who was forced out of The Force when an arrest gone wrong left him with a debilitating fear of heights. An old pal of his asks him if he wouldn't mind putting his former policing powers to use to tail his wife, who is acting in a most peculiar manner. He's not worried that she is having an affair, but is instead concerned as she has taken to wandering off and spending hours on end by herself. Reluctantly, Scottie agrees and, in one of the most taut scenes in cinema history, stalks her through the evocative streets of San Francisco. She winds up beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and throws herself into the water, our hero rushing to her rescue. Well, it's not long before the two are in love, and Scottie's life is taken on the kind of tangent that could only happen in a Hitchcock movie. Dark, oppressive and utterly compelling, this is only really marred by the 'love' angle which, inevitably, I find tiresome. When ageing stars and starlets gaze into each others eyes and profess undying love I tend to drift off, and maybe fifteen minutes of this movie delved into such forbidden areas, and that's why I've docked a point. That aside, this is majestic movie-making, with Hitchcock's peerless vision drawing anxiety and claustrophobia from the most mundane of circumstances. Things are helped along by a sumptuous score that swells and cascades, flowing over your senses and drawing you into the insanity on screen. Just magnificent.