Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1958) August 13, 2006
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 1950s, Drama, Film reviews, Thriller/Suspense, Crime , trackbackDir. Alfred Hitchcock; screenplay by Samuel Taylor; starring James Stewart, Kim Novak
Vertigo is many people’s favourite Hitchcock film and it’s easy to see why - the everyman played by James Stewart, caught up in a web of mystery while falling in love with the beautiful Kim Novak. It’s the set-up many of Hitchcock’s films were built on, but in Vertigo, widely regarded as the director’s most personal film, he brilliantly fuses the two ideas that inspired the iconic Englishman most – fear and obsession.
There is a deeply troubling theme throughout the film, perhaps why it flopped during its first release, as Hitchcock paints the San Francisco backdrop in glorious colour, tinged with a dreamy ambience that connotes the movie’s more ethereal ideas. Yet Hitchcock knows his audience so well, making us privy to the twist thirty minutes before the end (a narrative technique even accomplished directors wouldn’t dare to do), leaving us watching Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson losing himself more and more in guilt. By pulling the carpet from under the audience so early, it leaves the film open to the idea that anything could happen next, making for some heady suspense.
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