A masterpiece of nightmarish excitement!

Rating: 10/10 (1 March 2018)

At the time of Vertigo's release, very few critics commented upon Bernard Herrmann's powerful music score which contributes so greatly to the movie's overall mood, atmosphere and almost unnerving suspense.
The stars also were not given their due. In the most emotionally complex and technically demanding role of his career, James Stewart is totally convincing. He looks and acts like a man obsessed, a readily identifiable hero battling with age and infirmity to recreate an impossible, lost love. Stewart is not only utterly credible, but engrossingly sympathetic.
On the other hand, Kim Novak (in by far the best performance of her career - she replaced Hitch's first choice, Vera Miles, at short notice when Vera became pregnant) combines a brassily self-confident manner with an odd aura of vulnerability. She is exactly the lost child of Stewart's obsessive dreams.