Makes the Brain Spin

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 1999)

Having experienced vertigo myself, the dizzying, confusing, frightening mind spinning, "think you're going to die" kind of feeling, I can empathize with the Jimmie Stewart protagonist. Make him a hero who has enough hangups from trauma to last a lifetime. Put into the plot a series of misrepresentations of fact and you have this movie. I think what I like the most is that we have this man trying to put his life together, but he doesn't know what to do to make it work. He also is deep in depression, caused by personal loss. Along comes Kim Novak, the carbon copy of his lost love. He falls into a sick reconstruction of his past life, but the fear is still there and won't go away until he is able to confront his ghosts. Once again, the Hitchcock hero fumbles his way along, trying to discover while being pursued. There is that threat there all the time. The cinematography is excellent. The method used to show the feeling he gets when he looks down, is pure genius. The framing of scenes. The stairway in the tower. The scenes by the bay. Novak's "coming out" is really spooky, so captivating and yet unsettling. The true test of a movie, for me, is always going to be that there is something to see after several viewings. Hitchcock's films, especially the really good ones, allow me a lifetime of rediscovery; I feel that directors like Hitchcock are a gift to humanity. This film is one of the reasons I feel this way.