Showing its age

Rating: 9/10 (31 March 2005)

This may once have been a great film, but it's aging badly. The film would have been much better had it dealt wholly with Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster, but throwing in Novak as Judy Barton is a barely believable add-on to what should have been a wonderfully mysterious plot about a woman obsessed with her deceased great-grandmother.
It's also unfortunate that Barbara Bel Geddes was totally wasted in this film. Perhaps pining quietly for a guy who doesn't have his act together (Jimmy Stewart) was the way liberated career women acted in the 1950s  I don't know  but I kept hoping that she would punch him in the face and tell him to grow up.
Compared to "Rear Window", which is still strong and fresh, "Vertigo" seems like it has one foot in the grave.