Very Good but overrated

Rating: Null/10 (29 June 2000)

The best things about "Vertigo" are Bernard Herrmann's score, Kim Novak's acting and the beautiful photography. This movie is a must-see for any serious film student. Having said that, there are a few other things which I would like to mention, and this is with the understanding the anybody who may read this has already seen "Vertigo." I'm not going to "give anything away" but the following may not make too much sense unless you have seen the film. Okay. SPOILER ALERT 1) Jimmy Stewart is miscast. Because he was a great actor, he is adequate in this film but just passable. He seems uncomfortable at times, and not during the situations where he is supposed to feel uncomfortable; having made films earlier with Hitchcock ("Rear Window" was Stewart's favorite, and I consider it a better film than "Vertigo.") Stewart may have agreed to do the picture out of respect as much as anything else. I find him unimpressive when he is supposed to be suffering from "acute melancholia" (depression) and I think he disliked doing those scenes; as I say, he appears very ill at ease. 2) The murder plot is ABSURD! Here is a millionaire who could dial a phone number and have the one he wants dispatched killed within a few hours. But no. Instead, he dreams up a story which would have sent Freud to the rubber room, HIRES a woman to portray his wife, then pays her off. He could have called Murder, Incorporated and paid them what he paid Kim Novak and he would have gotten away with it. I realize that Gavin Ulster's incredibly elaborate scheme is necessary, so we may see San Francisco in all its glory, but really! Credulity is stretched beyond reason. 3) I'm sorry, but Hitchcock's misogyny begins to reach the "sick" level with this film. (It only got worse with successive films.) Women dying spectacular deaths, women insane, women being reinvented, the old man at the bookstore saying PROUDLY "You know, a man could do that in those days," [after saying that Carlotta Valdez was taken in by a man, but the man then "threw her away."] Nice.
I give "Vertigo" a SEVEN. Very nice on the eyes and ears, but not the all-time masterpiece so many demand it is.