Beautiful

Rating: 10/10 (10 December 2014)

Once you've seen "Vertigo" you can almost see the whole thing again in your head. Its haunting images stay with you. Whatever else you might say about "Vertigo," (and there are those who don't like it), it's unquestionably a visually beautiful film. It formed my impressions of San Francisco, and when I finally visited that city, it all seemed so familiar. In fact, many of the locations remain unchanged after more than fifty years - Mission Dolores, The Brocklebank Apartments, The Legion of Honor, The Palace of Fine Arts, Fort Point. You can even stay in the same Sutter Street hotel where "Judy" lived (The Empire Hotel is now the Hotel Vertigo). If I can find fault at all with this film, I point to James Stewart who, despite a great performance, looks too old for the part and his chemistry with Kim Novak is dubious (Much better in their other 1958 outing, "Bell, Book and Candle"). When "Vertigo" failed at the box office on its initial release, Hitchcock is said to have blamed it on Stewart, and I tend to believe it. After four films together, he never used him again. Nevertheless, "Vertigo" entertains on many levels. I don't even mind the unexplained and illogical sequences (Madeleine waking up nude in Scottie's bed and neither one of them making an issue of it; her disappearance from The McKittrick Hotel). And I'm impressed by the downbeat and abrupt ending, which surely was unusual for a Hollywood film at that time. "Vertigo" is in a class by itself.