Why is this movie great?

Rating: 10/10 (19 August 2012)

SPOILER ALERT:
Never seen VERTIGO? Read this review AFTER you've seen it. Seen it & love it? This review is not for you (sorry-read if you want but just know you're the choir & I'm the preacher). Think VERTIGO is maybe the most overrated movie ever? READ ON because THAT'S who this review is for!
Because like you, I once thought the same thing. First let's talk about the plot holes. Like: How did Scotty get off that roof anyhow? Did they inflate a giant airbag on the street that he fell onto? Maybe a S.W.A.T. team climbed on the roof & somehow managed to tie a rope around his waist. I know: SPIDERMAN rescued him. Second: Why would Elster let an accomplice to the murder (Judy) remain behind (in the same town with the witness no less) when she could so easily expose them both? Seems a loose end Elster would not allow considering how elaborate & carefully thought out his ruse was in the first place. You can probably think of some more plot holes but those two will do for now.
Another thing I hated when I first saw this movie was all the shots of Scotty following Madeline. Do we really need 30 minutes of watching her make a left turn as she leads Scotty to an art museum or cemetery or flower shop? Zzzzzzzzzzz. And how myopic would she have to be not to notice him following her (Oops. Guess that last sentence should've been in the previous paragraph)?
But then a strange thing happened. Over the course of the next few years I watched this movie a 2nd time. Then a 3rd. And a 4th. And slowly I started to feel myself pleasantly being sucked into this movie-it's swirling, inexorable, gravitational pull on me similar to that on the main character. Because that's why those long scenes of Scotty following her are there: Madeline is pulling him down into a whirlpool of obsession that he will soon not be able to escape from. Notice that in just about all the shots in which he's following her, she's leading him down and to the left. In a circular motion. And even in the Church he walks through to get to the cemetery, notice the music: repeating back on its self (like a circle) & always descending. (ASIDE: Three times Scotty follows Madeline up instead of down. All three times he loses her—two times up the mission tower & one time up to the hotel room she's renting. It's true he follows Judy up to her room but that's the one time he & we don't know she's Madeline.)
And speaking of the music, I personally think that's maybe the most seductive element in this movie. In fact, the score is so gloriously & emotionally evocative, Bernard Hermann deserves as much authorship of VERTIGO as Hitchcock himself in my mind. Because in the same way that we learn to love a song only after listening to it several times, this movie rewards multiple viewings.
There's no evidence to suggest that Hitchcock thought of this movie as being more important or more personal than any other movie (at least from anything I've read or seen on the subject) but it would be easy to make that leap. Because as has been pointed out by Brian De Palma (who made not one, not two, but THREE movies heavily influenced by VERTIGO: OBSESSION, BODY DOUBLE, & FEMME FATALE) and others is that this movie captures a director's relationship with his leading lady (more specifically: Hitchcock's relationships with all his blonde goddesses).
Scotty falls in love with Madeline, a woman who doesn't really exist. Directors fall in love with (i.e. decide to hire) a leading lady who doesn't really exist. They watch an actress playing a part in a movie & decide that actress would be perfect for their movie.
Turns out Madeline is really just plain, ordinary Judy. Turns out the leading lady the director hired is just a human being-not the glamorous, bigger-than-life, 40-foot goddess he saw up their on the silver screen in her previous movie.
Scotty then tries to turn Judy back into Madeline. The director-through make-up, costumes, cinematography-tries to turn his leading lady back into the gorgeous, bigger-than-life goddess he initially saw & fell in love with.
Perhaps this is the metaphor Hitchcock was trying to express. Who can say? But what we can say for sure is that VERTIGO was just voted the greatest movie ever made by the most credible entity that conducts such polls: SIGHT AND SOUND. Why? Again, who can say? But my own personal opinion is that what VERTIGO is really about has to do with why we love movies: our love of and obsession with illusion.