Vertigo (1958)

Hitchcocks masterpiece?
This is definitely one of my favorite (and one of the strangest) Hitchcock flick's. It's a brilliant movie and almost a love story in many way's, albeit a very cynical one. The story is about a retired detective (James Stewart) who is affraid of heights that is hired by an old freind to spy on his wife(the beautiful Kim Novak) because he think's...get this....she is possessed by an evil spirit. He end's up falling in love with her and I don't want to spoil to much but like most Hitchcock film's there is a twist, or in most cases a couple twist's. Thing's are never as they appear in Hitchcock film's and even if you think you have it all figured out by the end he alway's leaves a piece of the puzzle out to make it impossible and give you that one last jaw-dropping moment. They don't make em like this anymore and to this day nobody can tell a story quite like Hitchcock. I can't recommend this movie enough and encourage any thriller/suspense fans to check it out.

the fear factor 50 years later
With fifty feature-length films to his credit, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) churned out nearly a film a year for the better part of his adult life. 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of Vertigo, a film of dark dreams, obsession of a type that is more like possession, madness, fear, love and guilt. And no small amount of mystery and intrigue until the final minutes. Set in San Francisco, Jimmy Stewart stars as Scotty, a detective who had to retire from the police force because of a traumatic experience with heights. We know what his vertigo begot in the first minutes of the film, but not in the very last scene. Scotty does his college friend Gavin a favor, which is to tail his wife Madeleine who has been "possessed" by the long-dead Carlotta Valdes. That kindness turns out to be a distinctly bad idea. The scenery, the ominous musical score, the now quaint roles of gender and justice, and Hitchcock's genius for mining the depths of the human psyche all make Vertigo well worth watching fifty years on.

Still keeps its balance
Vertigo, like many films of the 1950s, is showing its age a bit. The movie conventions of the day -- in which a man follows a strange woman into her hotel room and then strong-arms her into distant buildings -- do seem quite dated (not to say sinister) to modern eyes. Still "Vertigo" retains the creepy charm that Hitchcock intended, and results in a psychological thriller of surprising darkness.

Scotty Ferguson is a police detective whose recent near fall from a tall building during a chase gave him an unshakable case of acrophobia and forced his retirement from the force. With plenty of time on his hands, he takes a commission from an old college chum to tail his wife, Madeleine Elster, an attractive blond with an unhealthy interest in a mysterious, long-dead California woman. Unlike her husband, Scotty doesn't believe that the wife is actually possessed by the dead woman's spirit. But he is strangely and increasingly intrigued by her beauty, melancholy and evident suicidal tendencies. After she takes a plunge into San Francisco Bay, the two fall in love, for reasons unclear to me, until tragedy parts them. Scotty, in grief over his lost love, becomes obsessed with her, seeing her in every light-haired woman he meets. Soon, he latches onto red-headed Judy Barton, and can't stop trying to change her, piece by piece, to resemble Madeleine.

The premise of romantic obsession is pretty strange, but is quite watchable. Jimmy Stewart handled the role adequately, often seeming unsure of how to express his twisted emotions. I was disappointed that Hitchcock's directorial style left out so much of his characters' emotional development. Perhaps it was acceptable in the '50s for characters to move suddenly from disinterest to obsession, with none of the intermediate stages. But for me it was weird and distracting. Still, I had to admire Kim Novak's range, moving from pathetic to earthy over the course of the film.

The neat twist in the middle of the film, coinciding with Stewart's switch from Madeleine to Judy, revived my flagging interest in the movie whose plot line was seemingly set. The abrupt ending did not have the impact it was evidently supposed to have (as indicated by loud and desperate cues from the musical score) but was pleasing enough.

"Vertigo"'s biggest misstep was Stewart's silly long-lost love interest, Midge, played by Barbara Bel Geddes. That she and Jimmy were old college sweethearts, and that both were unmarried and still palling around years later was hard to believe. I assume that this otherwise unnecessary plot line was added only to titillate (she drew underwear ads!) and as a red herring to suggest a potential love triangle. The "special effect" -- which attempted to depict Stewart's vertiginous malady -- were almost comically obvious, obviously shot with interlocking, telescoping boxes that represented a stairwell.

The DVD extras were limited to a viewing of the censor's lame ending to the movie, plus some short descriptions of the movie's psychological aspects. The colorizing was fairly good, except in very dark scenes (including one in which a character was completely obscured) and when one scene faded into another.

All told, "Vertigo" was worthwhile to watch. In fifty years, it has lost a bit of its weird punch, but gained more thanks to a change in American culture and film conventions, but it is still entertaining, creepy and worth a watch.