Midge is going to be bringing Scotty crayons for a long time

Rating: 10/10 (10 August 2008)

Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO is one of the greatest suspense films ever made. The director was at the top of his form with this work, which highlights intimate obsession bordering on necrophilia, which is a theme unusual in the time and place this movie was produced ( a U.S. studio in the late 1950s),but also Hitchock's amazingly ghoulish humor.
Scotty Fergusen (Jimmy Stewart) is a private investigator who is recently retired from the city police force over an incident on the job that resulted in the death of a colleague and a pronounced fear of heights in Fergusen. Scotty is financially independent and has some support in the friendship of his confidant and former fiancé' Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes). His life and what's left of his emotional stability begin to be challenged when he is contracted by wealthy shipping magnate Gavin Elster (Tom Elmore) to track the doings of his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who has developed an obsession with the history of a tragic ancestor that now borders on the fantastic and suicidal. Or so Scotty is led to believe. What follows from the investigation is a star-crossed romance which assumes a surreal and sometimes folkloric dimension from the get-go, and which culminates in a post-mortem fantasy that will immolate not only Scotty, but the fortunes of working girl Judy Barton (Kim Novak in an interesting role within a role).
If you've not seen this film, I will only tell you that Hitchcock demonstrates the truth of his masterful reputation as a movie maker through a precipitous wrap-up that left me crying I was laughing so hard, but I'm pretty twisted. All I'm going tell you is that I can't believe he got away with that back in 1958, and that in whatever realm the creatures of imagination reside, Midge is going to be bringing Scotty crayons to play with for a long time.
By far and away, this one easily rates for me as one of the best films overall ever made, and if you like classic suspense film from the greats, this is one you can't miss. Here is one more good example of why special effects by themselves do not a solid motion picture make, which is a sad reality lost on all too many filmmakers and their audiences these days.