The most studied and analyzed film of Alfred Hitchcock’s career, Vertigo is on every level a masterclass in filmmaking. In 1958 Hitchcock worked with legendary actor Jimmy Stewart for the fourth and final time, and just like Rear Window, they succeeded in making a film that would enter the history books. We’re talking about a first-class thriller full of labyrinths and dead-ends, an expertly constructed puzzle suspenseful from the first to the last scene, but at the same time, on an entirely different level, it’s a meta-film of sorts, a film about Hitchcock’s filmmaking, a careful and wonderfully elliptic study of the master’s obsession with his female characters. Jimmy Stewart has perhaps never been this convincing, posing as yet another ordinary man driven by inescapable passion, a victim of his own desires, a pawn in a game we never agreed to play. Kim Novak stars as the object of his obsession and longing, a mysterious blonde who seems ice-cold at the first glance, but a complex woman who magnificently display a wide range of emotions, such as fear, love and child-like vulnerability. Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor are two writers responsible for this delightful screenplay, playful and innocent at times, dark and unusually deep the very next moment. Bernard Herrman’s music, recorded in Europe due to a musicians’ strike in the US, is subtle and delicate, somehow moving in loops between tranquility and despair. Alongside the aforementioned Rear Window, Vertigo is without any doubt our favorite Hitchcock ever, and considering the unbelievable portfolio of one of the cinema’s greatest, this says quite enough on its own.
