Often Sublime

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2000)

Often sublime, although admittedly initially plodding, "Vertigo" mostly manages to transcend the medium of its inherent restrictions. Most viewers of the film will concur with Robin Wood's statement, "It is one of the five or six truly beautiful movies of the cinema" (Wood was one of the first popular advocates of placing "Vertigo" in the category of a cinematic masterpiece. Without his proponent stance, the piece perhaps might have been largely ignored), especially in the final half.
Instead of weaving a web of intrigue and building to a suspenseful finale, as Hitchcock so consistently executed ("Sabotage," "Strangers on a Train," and "Dial M for Murder" are all instances), "Vertigo" assumes a more mature Hitckcockian approach that would dominate most of his films following. "The Wrong Man" (1957), although still following a "standard" expository/narrative pattern of build-up and suspenseful release, demonstrated the first signs of an underlying consciousness within the main characters (more significant than the entertainment value of simple suspense or danger) achieving a closer examination than the empirical reality and situations. "Vertigo" continues this approach, although much more overtly: Hitchcock achieves the confidence in this film (which was released at the height of the Studio System in Hollywood) to explore several characters' inner psyches as the central diagesis. Of course, as most reviewers have noted, "Vertigo" is a personal examination of the director's own fantasies and fears.
Studying any Hitchcock film certainly requires not only an analysis of the specific piece as discrete, but also as part of a collection and ongoing statement by the creators. (No avocation of the auteur theory is implied.) It is interesting to compare the some aspects of the overall structure of "Vertigo" with "Psycho." Audiences were purposefully manipulated into sympathizing with Norman Baits after the death of the supposed-main character in the 1960-horror film. But in "Vertigo," a strikingly similar phenomenon occurs: after the death of one of the two main characters, and the apparent "resurrection," audience sympathies shift. "Vertigo" achieves this by, interestingly enough, forfeiting suspense. "Psycho" utilizes an opposing but parallel methodology; it gains suspense by the shift in alliances.
Bernard Herrmann once stated that without his musical score to accompany and complement Hitchcock's visuals, fifty percent of the film would be lost. The composer's words are especially true in "Vertigo," where the lush and textured melodies are absolutely necessary to the quality of the picture (in terms of audience involvement, identification, and emotional response).

Despite Hitchcock's other well-regarded masterpiece, "Psycho," having more obvious influences on trends and developments in film (it essentially established an entire genre), "Vertigo"'s impact in the history of cinema cannot be overlooked.