Hired by an old friend, compelled by a new love, destroyed by his same old self

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 2012)

I usually don't write reviews with spoilers. Vertigo is one of those films you just can't discuss without spoilers. The entire movie is a spoiler in that sense; detailing any portion of the plot can and will give away valuable information that first-time viewers shouldn't know. It's just that kind of movie.
Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart reunited after the success of Rear Window to make Vertigo. This would be their last collaboration together. Enough has been written already about the reasons for their film-making departure. We get to look back in retrospect and appreciate this movie for its greatness, and also with the knowledge that this was Hitchcock and Stewart's last hurrah together.
I'm sure there are a million ways to interpret this film. A theme I find most interesting, nearest to my heart, is that of unrequited love.
Midge's love for Scottie is foolish. She's loved him since college, even though he doesn't feel the same way. Scottie practically toys with Midge's affection for him during their scenes together. When Midge plays a joke on Scottie by painting the Portrait of Carlotta but replacing Carlotta's head with her own, Scottie abruptly leaves. She berates herself afterward with the ferocity, and the frustration, of a woman who's tried to gain Scottie's affection time and time again, only to fall short time and time again.
Scottie's love for Madeleine is creepy; it's obsessive. When she's gone, he seeks out another woman just like her, not knowing they are in fact the same woman, though neither being the one he's after, and tries to make her into Madeleine. She can't love him because she's not real. His compulsion to create another Madeleine consumes every bit of humanity left in him.
Judy's love for Scottie is hopeless. He doesn't love her. He loves a part she played. Like a man who marries an actress and then spends more time thinking about a role she played than the actual woman he married. She has every incentive not to fall in love with Scottie during her and Gavin's morbid gag, but she still does. Judy's love is so hopeless that she's willing to transform herself into Scottie's fantasy and play that part, the one that truly pleases him, for the rest of her life.
Scottie finds himself on another ledge by the end of the film, he's licked his acrophobia, but at the expense of his humanity. The film comes full circle, as we consider how he spurned Midge in favor of Madeleine, and then couldn't return Judy's love because of his fixation on the dream woman who never existed. We're left to wonder, did Scottie ever love at all? Was he capable of love to begin with?