A chilling, Thrilling, entertaining classic!

Rating: 10/10 (5 January 2012)

British Director Alfred Hitchcock has made some good movies in his time. 2 Of his films really stand out to me; North By NorthWest and...
Vertio!!
The plot goes like this;
A detective who is haunted by his dramatic past involving heights is asked to shadow a old friend's wife who has gone insane. She makes regular pleasure jaunts on her own and appears to be trying to commit suicide. The more detective John Ferguson delves into the situation however, the more he falls desperately in love with the woman...
James Stwert has done a lot of movies for Hitchcock; The man who knew too much remake, Rope, rear window-all classics. However, James Stewart really tops it all in this thrilling extravaganza.
Lets start off with the acting. As you wold expect from a film of this class, the acting is nothing under A*. James Stewart plays his role perfectly, adding great lines and sometimes anger into his role. The supporting cast is fantastic too. The reason I don't delve to deep into what the actors say is because this film is surprisingly action based (No, not shooting). What I mean is sometimes, the film has no talking what-so-ever. Instead you see the characters expressions and movements to a great extent and you can almost read the character's minds. This is a technique lost in modern filmmaking.
Spoilers coming up.
The story is sometimes really hard to follow, especially halfway through the film. You eventually find out that the woman committing suicide is actually a conspiracy made by her husband to murder. James Stewart gets caught in the scene and when he finally finds it all out, it's too late. but then another woman who looks identical to the woman who was murdered appears in town and Stewert can't resist looking into it. I will not spoil any more for you, but I can guarantee, the ending will make you think good, long and hard about it. Not that that's a bad thing of coarse.Fantastic storyline that lacks in a lot of thrillers.
Another thing I liked about the acting was the creepy wife. Throughout the movie, she looks completely blank; no expressions, no emotions, Nothing!! She rarely speaks in the whole film apart from about once a scene. In my opinion she is one of the most well crafted characters in thriller history.
Lots of scenes in this movie are very intense. They will have you at the end of your scene and most of this is due to what I call musical timing. This is where films use the right types of music for the right scenes and they have to be at an exact moment, or the scene will fall flat on it's face. in this film, it is used to an extreme. Sometimes it will be really quite and then music will bare out when something intense happens. The musical score is pure brilliance.
All in all, a fantastic thriller and probably Hitchcock's greatest hit, tied with Noth By Northwest which you should really check out if you love this film.To think this film was poorly received when it first came out! in fact, it was James' last movie working with Hitchcok because Hitchcock thought he was to blame for the failure. humph. I right! Anyway Brilliant film and one of the best heart stopping thrillers of all time.