So...where is the masterpiece I've heard so much about?

Rating: 3/10 (1 July 2006)

(Spoilers. My advice: read them and save 2 hours of your life.) I watched "North by Northwest" not too long ago, and found it to be a grueling chore; Hitchcock spun a continually jerky screenplay into an equally jerky, emotionless film. Cary Grant was completely miscast as the wisecracking wrongfully accused, and James Mason was utterly wasted in the role of the heavy. I picked up "Vertigo" based on the recommendation of a coworker, and while I went in aware of the film's highly-esteemed reputation, I tried not to let that influence my opinion.
Turns out it wasn't a problem at all. For all its glowing praises, "Vertigo" is an incredible bore, actually a more grueling view than "North by Northwest." Once again, Hitchcock spins a convoluted--and, quite frankly, uninvolving--plot well past its welcome: retired P.I. Jimmy Stewart (warbling more than a turkey) is enlisted by a wealthy industrialist to find out what's eating his eerily remote wife (Kim Novak); when said wife commits suicide, Jimmy spies a female who is a dead ringer for the deceased; he becomes involved with the doppleganger, only to discover that she is the same woman, who was the co-conspirator/lover in the industrialist's scheme to off his wife. The End.
"Vertigo" would have been better titled "Slow-Go," as it stretches the very fabric of celluloid to its breaking point--the whole story feels padded, which wouldn't be so bad if the dialog were interesting and the characters not so lethargic. But Stewart's neurotic, obsessive detective had me nodding less than an hour in, and Novak's drugged delivery didn't help, either. That the duo possess no chemistry is the ultimate kiss of death for this pseudo-noir.
The film only comes to life when Hitchcock shows off his then-innovative (now dated) technical flourishes, as illustrated in the disorienting 'vertigo' POV shots, and an out-of-the-blue dream sequence that doesn't serve any discernible plot function, but is interesting to watch.
Overall, though, "Vertigo" is uninteresting to the point of tedium. As of late, I have been wondering whether Hitchcock was really all he was cracked up to be (I love "Psycho" and "Frenzy"), or if, like Stanley Kubrick, he merely caught the eye of those pretentious lovers of style and technique, and spun a legacy from it...