In Circular Motion

Rating: 9/10 (8 January 2017)

From the very start, Saul Bass's innovative introduction, reportedly the first ever to use computer graphics, sets the film's overall circular motif in motion. The physically debilitating condition of vertigo, which is triggered by the central character's acrophobia, is the engine that generates all of the events that follow.
Several reviewers here focus on this film's status as "number one" among at least some lists devised by critics who actually dare to rank movies, and these same writers spend an inordinate amount of time and effort challenging its high position. For what it's worth, I have created a list of my favorite 150 movies of all time, and "Vertigo" is right there along with seven other of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest masterpieces, but I personally find the numerical ranking of movies, including the best of them, to be all but impossible. How could I rank the movies that I love the most?
I find it interesting that Bernard Hermann based his remarkable, ever changing musical score on the Wagner opera, "Tristan and Isolde". Although I am not an opera expert, that music has always suggested a circular motion much in the same way that Hermann's score, especially the opening theme, creates the dizzying sensation that the physical condition of vertigo produces in its victims.
James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes are excellent in their roles, especially Stewart, whose character, John (Scotty) Ferguson, experiences a wide range of powerful and complicated psychological conditions, which could not have been easy to portray. Regardless of how Hitchcock was reported to feel about her performance, I believe that Novak brings just the right amount of mystery, intricacy, and physical beauty to both Madeleine and Judy. Lana Turner, also considered for the lead, would not have offered the same depth and complexity to the role. I also appreciated supporting cast members Ellen Corby as the cautious and peculiar apartment house manager (did she know more than what she appeared to know?) and Henry Jones as the anal retentive trial official who publicly humiliates Ferguson in a devastatingly cruel way.
In addition to the excellent direction, musical score, and acting, the magnificent cinematography of Robert Burks, who maximizes the photogenic setting of San Francisco and its picturesque surroundings, and the intelligent screenplay by Samuel A. Taylor have kept "Vertigo" on my own list of favorites after nearly six decades and many repeated viewings. Just don't ask me to rank it.