Revealing Nightmare

Rating: 10/10 (19 June 2010)

Hitchcock's nightmare vision of the deadening influence of male desire on women's lives haunts imagination. Wendy Lesser wrote one of several insightful feminist evaluations of this masterwork that stress the immense power and honesty of the director's work here. Hitchcock commented precisely on the nature of the narrative.
For many years, I listed this on my top ten list of films. It belongs there at least as much as any one of seven of the films I presently note belongs there.
Taking the plot too literally and demanding much sense from it undermine the nightmare quality—this is a dream experience, a bad dream experience, an awful dream, but one that is true. I first saw it when I was 15-years-old. Now, I am 67-years-old. The film still informs my sense of romance and sexuality.
I have opinions about the restoration but they do not concern me profoundly. I do tend to embrace the restoration, but the questions are valid.