Soul Cleansing

Rating: 9/10 (19 September 2013)

This is probably the most divisive Hitchcock Movie. Dismissed in 1958 as unremarkable, slow, depressing, and was a Box-Office Flop, it is the more modern Viewers and Critics that now praise this as hypnotic, haunting, captivating, and deep.
With some dissent it is Today considered one of the best Films ever, a Masterpiece, and definitive work of Art. Heaped with endless adulation and glowing, wordy essays, it is without doubt complex, meditative, and dreamlike in a way that is asking you to either fall for its impudent implications or not.
The Film, in terms of Film Craft, contains impeccable Camera Work, a chilling Score, ethereal Color Schemes, some fine Acting and a Director who just might have bared His Soul for all to see becoming not the usual Voyeur but an Exhibionist. A flip flop of a Plot and Psychological maladies that are pure Hitchcockian.
You could spend weeks reading up on the Film's nuances and find giddy Geek Writers wale endlessly on its meanings and double meanings, Doppelgangers and assorted dementia and neurosis. There are some who think this is dull, long, hammy, miscast, ridiculous, ludicrous, stiff, convoluted, and in the end not so much. But they would be in a very small minority.
This is a Slow-Burner for sure, but beware, you might just get sucked into the Vortex, with its dizzying displays, morbid fascinations, and a nightmare ambiance.