Prime Hitchcock

Rating: 10/10 (20 April 1999)

As mesmerizing as it is long and difficult to comprehend, "Vertigo" is one of cinema's strangest tales of romantic obsession, the kind that certainly would not be made nowadays, since the subject is increasingly demonized in the American culture. Surprisingly enough, it works, in large part through the director's mastery over the medium. Some speculate that it was a highly personal project for him, a casting out of his own internal struggles. Such theories validity is questionable, but anyone watching will notice the movie's much lesser degree of calculating, joyful logic that almost all other Hitchcock's works are saturated with. Incredibly true to its title, by virtue of an eerie score and some dizzying cinematography, the movie induces the sense of romantic vertigo in the audience. A fantastic opening credits sequence which resembles digital animation, suggests a visionary quality that refused to be confined to its time period.