Hitchcock's VERTIGO: My all-time favorite movie and a simply one of the best movies ever made.

Rating: Null/10 (18 February 2011)

Rating: **** out of 4.
Scottie: "I hope we will, too." Madeleine: "What?" Scottie: "Meet again sometime." Madeleine: "We have."
Many films in his career have proved his title as "The Master of Suspense", but VERTIGO reveals a different side of the Master, digging deeper into his darkest obsessions and revealing them with a kind of perverse beauty. No wonder this movie wasn't so well-received back then! At the time, some critics were still classifying Hitchcock as just another filmmaker, not quite yet the artist we consider him to be (Though he already has gained the affection and interest of French critics who were taking film criticism into new heights at the time). Time was certainly kinder to Hitch, and time came that he would be considered one of the most artistic filmmakers of all time, and VERTIGO was finally seen as the true masterpiece that it is.
"Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you exactly what to do, what to say? " - Scottie
This movie is not just another suspense thriller from Hitchcock (another factor as to why people didn't quite embrace it at the time); this is an even darker dream-like melodrama that reveals some of the Master's own dark obsessions. The more you know about what happened behind the scenes in VERTIGO, the more the movie will make sense to you. Originally, Hitch wanted Vera Miles to star in the film, but due to pregnancy she had to decline. This disappointed Hitch, so he had to pick a different actress for the role. This led Hitch to pick Kim Novak for the role. After the film did poorly in the box-office and was heavily criticized, Hitch partly blamed Novak for delivering a bland performance; clearly Hitch wanted to bring out something from Novak that he felt Miles already had in her. Obviously, he was modeling both Novak and Miles to his most preferred blonde muse: Grace Kelly. The parallels to Hitchcock and Miles/Novak and Scottie and Madeline/Judy are undeniable. "The gentleman certainly knows what he wants!", says a saleslady in the film, and same can be said to Hitch and the way he tries to bring out that certain performance he wants to his latest in a long-line of icy blonde characters. It's perverse and chillingly interesting.
"Anyone could become obsessed with the past with a background like that!" - Scottie
(Warning! This summary may contain a few SPOILERS)
After a dizzying, nightmarish opening sequence, backed-up by Bernard Herrmann's most haunting and memorable score (alongside his TAXI DRIVER, another great score that takes us right into the heart of its main character), we are plunged into the dream-like world of San Francisco, this time at night, where an unknown man runs for his life from rooftop to rooftop, pursued by a cop and a detective; the detective is John "Scottie" Ferguson, played by James Stewart in a performance that wipes him of his Capra-esque nice-guy image. While pursuing the unknown man, Scottie slips down a rooftop and dangles for dear life. When he looks down the ground below, he starts getting dizzy and the height itself seemed higher. The cop goes back and tries to save him but he himself slips and falls. What an inconvenient time to discover you have Acrophobia.
After the fatal accident, Scottie decides that he quit detective work as he feels compelled to blame himself for the accident. "It wasn't your fault.", convinces his close friend/ex-fiancée Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes); this early scene in Midge's apartment will be just some of the few moments of touchy-feel Hitchcock humor as the film descends into somber tragedy as it goes along. Scottie is then recruited by an old college mate named Gavin Elster (Tom Hellmore) to trail his wife Madeline (Novak) who may have either gone insane or possessed by a dead ancestor. Scottie agrees to follow the wife around a maze-like San Francisco, where Madeline makes several stops to buy flowers, then to visit the cemetery, then visit a small motel, then the museum at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, then finally a Golden Gate Park, where she stands perfectly near the crashing waves... and jumps to her death. Luckily, Scottie jumps in just in time to rescue her. At this moment, Scottie will find himself looking for a love that he may never find. After a failed second attempt to save Madeline, Scottie finds another woman named Judy (also Novak) to assume the role of Madeline, obsessively dressing her up with the same clothes and dyeing her hair with the same frozen blonde hair.
The movie starts out as one thing and takes a twisted turn and becomes something else, but this is all part of what Hitch had planned all along. He never really wanted to do another suspense movie with something as personal as VERTIGO. This is an even more powerful story with a deeply compelling look at obsession as only a true artist can do. Jimmy Stewart's performance is so deeply tragic and twisted that it may just rank as one of his best. There's also no need for Novak to apologize with her performance, which captures both the mystery shrouding Madeline and the tragedy of Judy trying to want a man to love her by assuming the identity of another. This is one of the most tragic tales of unrequited love ever made, and a truly powerful motion picture that's perfect in almost every way (cinematogrpahy, music, EVERYTHING). A true triumph meant for multiple viewings.