Accomplished If Not "Fun" Hitchcock Drama

Rating: 9/10 (12 September 2006)

Considered by many to be Hitchcock's masterpiece, "Vertigo" may be tough to warm up to on a first viewing. It's an enigmatic and extremely slow-moving film, and it feels personal in ways that many of Hitchcock's other, more playful movies don't. You get the sense that Hitch is working through his personal demons on screen -- the fetishes and obsessions that played such a major role in so many of his films leading up to "Vertigo" feel like characters in and of themselves here.
James Stewart delivers a frightening performance as a man who plunges into a world of weird sexual obsession when a woman with whom he's formed a romantic attachment dies (or seems to). He finds another woman who looks amazingly like the first, and proceeds to force a complete physical makeover on her in an attempt to recreate his former love. Kim Novak plays the two women in her typical icy fashion; for once, her stilted, awkward acting works for a role and comes off as an attribute rather than a liability.
In its new remastered life on DVD, "Vertigo" looks stunning. San Francisco and its surroundings are bathed in ethereal, dream-like lighting, and Hitchcock pays more attention to art direction and the use of color than he ever had previously. Also, there's that amazing swirling Bernard Herrmann score that haunts the film, and accompanies one of the most memorable opening credits sequences ever filmed.
There are still a number of other Hitchcock films I would rather watch before "Vertigo," and many others that I would qualify as much more fun, but I can't deny that this one certainly has an allure.
Grade: A