#Vertigo 1958 movie

Vastly different stories, but similar execution from the director's chair.Īn easy way to identify a film's tone is through the score, and Hitchcock always seemed to get the best out of the legend, Bernard Herrmann. A theme that Christopher Nolan seemed to take into his film, Memento, in 2000. One of the most impressive aspects about Vertigo is that it's clearly framed as a story about someone with Vertigo dealing with a peculiar case, but really, it's about obsession, and a man digging just a little bit too deep into a case. There's nothing quite like the shock of watching it for the first time, but I had a chance to dig my teeth into the legendary performances of James Stewart and Kim Novak while being dazzled by Hitchcock's meticulously crafted story. In honor of Alfred Hitchcock's birthday, I decided to re-watch Vertigo and reevaluate just how well it holds up upon repeated viewings.

#Vertigo 1958 movie

Excellent film.Īlfred Hitchcock wowed audiences for decades with an immense talent of deception and artistic flare, and perhaps no movie was a better showcase for those talents than his 1958 hit Vertigo. Hitchcock's delving into dark places of the mind, his storytelling, and his camera angles, are all superlative.

There are several stunning moments, which I won't spoil, and the ending is absolutely brilliant. It feels like a quiet movie with its pace and small cast, but there is tension and mystery throughout. The film takes place in absolutely gorgeous scenery in San Francisco, Muir Woods and Mission San Juan Bautista, and it's at once both dream-like and nightmarish. Jimmy Stewart turns in a great performance, but as a nitpick, he's twice the age of Kim Novak (50 and 25), and also looks too old to have gone to college with his sidekick Barbara Bel Geddes (who's great by the way). There is creepy sexual desire, and what self-abasing lengths a woman will go to do what 'does it' for a man. From the opening credits, Hitchcock makes us uneasy with spiraling patterns on the screen, which hints at the vertigo/acrophobia to follow, but what we find are so many other disturbances and twists of the mind: obsession, guilt, insanity, and manipulation. What a wonderful, creepy, beautiful, disturbing film this is.