Is it just me?

Rating: 4/10 (31 December 2000)

WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS, ONLY READ IF YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM.

So THIS is the much-lauded classic, a critical hit and a permanent resident of the IMDb top thirty? Was I watching a different film or something?
James Stewart is so lightweight as an actor I kept expecting him to float away, which is maybe why he doesn't fall in the beginning... and as for his voice! Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against people with lisps and what have you (Bogart never let it get in his way) but for an adult thriller? I kept expecting him to say "Be vewy vewy qwiet, I'm hunting wabbits, harharharharharharhar!"
The only sense of Vertigo I got was a dizzy feeling when I looked at the video timer... still an hour and forty minutes to sit through? But it feels like an age! Don't get me wrong, Alfred Hitchcock is a fantastic director in terms of shots, angles and lighting, but his slightly campy, unsatisfyingly middlebrow suspensers - Psycho excepted - are never fulfilling. Yes, Vertigo is one of the best-directed films of all time, but the performances and plot are no match for the presentation. Hitchcock could shoot dog mess. Even if it was taken from an angle with reverse zoom and colorised lighting it would still be dog mess.
Like a meandering travelogue, Elmer, er, Stewart drives around in very nicely mounted but boring all the same street shots. I mean, Hitchcock was having a joke when he made this, surely? Plot elements are brought in, then neglected, while others are allowed to stand still or be completely overlooked. I've read reviews that say the film is complex, which it possibly is in terms of reference. But the plot - Woman pretends to be someone else's wife. Isn't really. Pretends to be killed. Gets found out by likeably light bloke from It's A Sentimental Life - could have been written on the back of a matchbox. As for the "twist" - that Novak staged her own death with a dummy - the dummy used was so unconvincing it would have been more of a surprise if it had turned out to be real.
Also odd are a surrealistic dream sequence that gets so near to a cartoon it reminded me of the "Pink Elephants" sequence in Dumbo, and an ending that redefines the meaning of "abrupt". I can picture Hitchcock in Heaven right now, laughing his head off that such a silly film, one that he probably dashed off for a bet, is receiving such a critical reappraisal. Vertigo is in equal terms dull and unconvincing as drama... or is it just me?