Vastly overrated

Rating: 5/10 (31 December 2019)

I've always been a fan of Hitchcock. And I know Vertigo is considered a great classic. So I wanted it to truly impress me. Sadly, it did not. The plot is unbelievable and there are no sympathetic characters, least of all the usually amazing James Stewart.
The plot set-up has Elster, an old friend of ex-detective Scottie (Stewart), hiring him to tail his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) who seems possessed by a spirit. Scottie's idea of tailing a suspect seems to be to constantly follow directly behind her in his car. Apparently, she never looked in her rear view mirror to notice him. She appears to attempt suicide but Scottie rescues her and takes her to his home to recover where he immediately falls in love with her. She tells him she dreams of dying and later describes a dream about an old Spanish mission with a bell tower. Scottie knows the place she's describing and takes her there. She goes to the top of the tower and appears to fall to her death. Scottie leaves the scene as others rush to the body. Scottie plunges into extreme depression although Elster doesn't hold him responsible before moving to Europe. After treatment, Scottie begins to see Madeleine in the faces of every woman he sees. Then he just happens to notice another woman on the street one day (a contrived coincidence needed to push the plot along) who resembles Madeleine but with different hair. Scottie immediately becomes obsessed with this woman (called Judy) and she agrees to have dinner with him.
At that point there is a very awkwardly timed flashback quickly explaining the mystery. Elster hired Judy to disguise herself as Madeleine and set up his old friend Scottie to follow the disguised Judy. When Scottie took the bait and drove Judy to the mission, Elster killed Madeleine and waited with her body in the bell tower so that he could toss her (dressed exactly like Judy) from it with Scottie (whose known fear of heights keeps him below) as a witness to her fall. Scottie left the scene, later alleging he blacked out) as others rushed to the body. Yet in another contrived plot device, Elster and Judy were able to come down from the tower and slip away unnoticed.
Scottie immediately develops a creepy obsession with Judy because she reminds him of Madeleine. They begin dating but he demands she change her appearance to resemble Madeleine. Judy fell in love with Scottie while impersonating Madeleine so she goes along with his demands. But when he sees her with a necklace of Madeleine's, the former detective figures out what happened. But instead of going to the police, he takes Judy against her will to the mission and roughly forces her into the bell tower where she slips and falls to her death. Scottie looks down at the body as the film ends.
So we have Elster, who is a murderer who escaped to Europe, Judy, who was his accomplice, and Scottie, who was in love with what he believed was Elster's wife and then became deranged and was responsible for dragging Judy against her will into the tower from which she fell. On the periphery is Scottie's friend and ex-fiance Midge who is clearly obsessed with him although it is superfluous to the plot.
For some reason, Vertigo has become a classic and considered a great movie. But there are no sympathetic characters and the plot is unbelievable and requires contrived scenes to move it along. It's a movie everyone should see if only to judge for yourself if it lives up to the hype. So I rate it a 5. See it but without high expectations. I'm reminded of "The Emperor's New Clothes, " the fable about how everyone praised the emperor's clothes (even though he wore none) only because they heard everyone else doing it and felt they should do the same lest they appear wrong. After watching Vertigo, I think people praise it because they hear others praising it. But on its own merit, it is quite flawed.