Beautiful movie with flawed choice of lead

Rating: 8/10 (2 March 2016)

This is a film that bears repeated viewings. The idea of questionable identity is used to explore love and the way love feeds itself on difficulties and distance and is destroyed by availability and banality. Jimmy Stewart stars playing against type as an apparently easy- going man who becomes obsessed with Kim Novak's elegant woman obsessed with a tragic past. The film provides a character study that focuses on his attempt to reassert himself as a man after a humiliating failure at work due to an attack of vertigo, and the infantile aspects of his character particularly in relating to women.
Besides the mind-bending character of the film, it's beautifully filmed. Even as it seems to critique good old "Old San Francisco" and (then) modern San Francisco as similar to the present in cruelty and unfairness, it is also an escapist fantasy of mysterious secrets, beautiful women, plush restaurants with red interiors, wood paneled offices of shipping magnates, rolling hills, old cloisters, redwoods, etc.
The biggest flaw of the film is Jimmy Stewart. Although in some ways he is excellent in the part, implying both an "aw shucks" affable surface and a self-centered, callous, immature aspect underneath, at the same time, he is supposed to be the object of affections as well as the subject, and this doesn't seem as plausible given that he looks too old and his mannerisms are somewhat comical.
Also the psychological analysis of "vertigo" and the cartoon dream sequence both feel dated now.
This film is a "must see" but - like the ideal beauty of Scotty's dream woman - there are certain aspects that can't be dwelt on too much or it falls apart.