Not Hitchcock's best

Rating: 8/10 (30 June 2007)

I wasn't really overly impressed. It's classic Hitchcock direction, of course, but the plot tries to cover too many stories and it just becomes tiresome after a while. First there's the mystery surrounding Madeleine's 'possession', then the love story between her and Scotty, then the mystery surrounding her death, and then the love story between Scotty and Judy, and then - finally - the completion of the mystery. Too much flip-flopping between the various mysteries and love stories. I also thought that Scotty's vertigo should have been more incorporated into the film - it shows up once at the beginning, once in the middle, once at the end, and that's it. Still, Stewart is great and Novak is gorgeous and fantastic in her dualish role, and it's fantastically directed, of course. I would have loved it if it had followed the promise shown in the opening scene, but alas, only the trippy dream sequence and the stuff in the bell tower does so. Still a pretty good film, though.