Pretentious miss

Rating: 6/10 (20 September 2010)

Despite it's elevated status, which has come from criticism and academic analysis, Vertigo remains a boring experience, even with many interesting thematic facets.
Hitchcock told Truffaut that the interest/suspense in Vertigo is what Scottie might do. That question had been the bedrock of Hitchcock's cinema but Scottie as played by Stewart is too ambiguous; he is reactive and weak. The lack of vigor in the character makes his falling love with with Madeleine barely believable, and his constant pleading with her is altogether too weak.
Compounding the problems is the plot, the structural mechanism, of the story that is also not believable. The orchestration of the scheme requires credibility and here it is strained: the choice of policeman; the discovery of Judy etc it's rather like those English mysteries that Raymond Chandler mocked because it is contingent on rare elements to bind the entire piece together.
And Novak's performance, which despite a reappraisal recently, seems to demonstrate that she never really progressed beyond the nervous rabbit role play at drama school. She is , as the expression has it, wise with a closed mouth, but once she speaks the mystery is gone. Her eyebrows are also quite frightening.
Vertigo has great music, locations and an intriguing idea for a story (one that would have been gripping in a novel); but equally it has dull driving scenes, over written dialog (Pop's story in the bookstore) and two lead actors who are far from ideal. This is one film when the themes and not the material on screen excites comment, and more film Phds no doubt, but it is pretentious miss in Hitchcock's golden decade.