Alfred Hitchcock's magnum opus

Rating: 10/10 (16 February 2016)

Alfred Hitchcock was a creative genius, he was able to play his audience like a piano. Few people have done so much developing the cinematic language as Alfred Hitchcock, he had so many experimental and original ideas, like shooting one film in one long uncut shot, (Rope) or having the whole film take place in one room. (Rear Window) But his greatest contribution to film is easily Vertigo, and Vertigo is one of the best films ever made.
Vertigo is about a retired detective John 'Scottie' Ferguson (played by Hitchcock favorite, Jimmy Stewart in probably his second best performance), who has a crippling fear of heights after a near death experience. One day Scottie is contacted by an old friend of his, this friend is the head of a major shipping company, and hires Scottie to follow his wife. Not because he suspects her of cheating, he makes that very clear to Scottie, but because she has been acting strange going out on long drives and then not being able to tell him were she went. Scotties friends wife, Madeleine Elster, is played by Kim Novak, who does on excellent job as a classic Hitchcock blonde. As Scottie continues to investigate this strange case, he discovers an unsettling story as he falls in love with her.
Vertigo is based of a French novel called, D'Entre Les Mortes, or The Living and the Dead, written by Boileau-Narcejac the French writing collaboration, that wrote the book that the film Les Diaboliques, and wrote the screen play for the film Eyes Without A Face, both of which are fantastic films that I highly recommend you check out, but neither of those are as mind-blowing as Vertigo. The story structure is very similar, but what gives Vertigo its edge is Hitchcock's flawless direction, he knows how to perfectly direct the cast, and control what the audience is seeing.
But Hitchcock is not the only one who knocks it out of the park in Vertigo, Vertigo is a tour de force, every single member of the cast and crew is giving the best they got, the cinematography done by Robert Burks (who collaborated with Hitchcock several times) is mind-blowing and even invented the famous "Vertigo shot." The score done by Bernard Hermann (who scored some of the best films of all time like Citizen Kane, and Taxi Driver) may just be the greatest film score ever, I highly recommend you listen to it separate from the film some time because it can stand on its own, but even with how great the score is, Hitchcock was smart enough to not use it in certain scenes, like climax, it would just be an unneeded edition.
As the film progresses the audience begins to learn about why Madeleine Elster acts the way she does, the more disturbing the film becomes, I won't spoil what's going on, but it is incredibly creepy and executed in such a way that it is guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. Probably the scariest part in the film is a montage, dream sequence that takes place 2/3s of the way through the film, this dream sequence gave me nightmares the first time I saw it, and still does every time I re-watch Vertigo.
When you talk about "the greatest films of all time" Vertigo is often mentioned in that conversation. And in the 2012 sight & sound poll (the best film poll in my opinion) Vertigo kicked Citizen Kane out of the first place spot, this is the first time this has happened in the 60 years that the poll has been taking place. And while I don't think it's better than Citizen Kane it's hard to get mad when it's replaced with such a great, influential, important film.
This whole review I've been struggling to put just how good Vertigo is, into words. But I don't think anyone ever could. It's a film that is so very deep, complex, and original that you would need to go through the whole film shot by shot, frame by frame, (Roger Ebert actually did this) before you could really describe it. No matte how many times you watch you will always discover something new about it. It is a film that feels like you're watching it for the first time, every time you re-watch it. Vertigo is one of those films that I wish I could give an 11/10, but unfortunately IMDb doesn't give me that option, so I guess I won't.
10/10