Review of Vertigo (1958) by Joseph C — 22 Jul 2015

Might be my new favorite Hitchcock (I am not an acolyte generally). It's undeniably a good movie. It keeps your interest well, often hard for an old movie. I liked the visuals more than many other titles from the same era and/or auteur.

I noticed a lot of things that I'm sure historians have cited as influential. For example, one thing I haven't heard much commentary on - how it's scored. It's scored so much like movies of today, and not like others of its time.

There were a lot of other things that I knew existed at the time, but were not common, such as the visions, repeated elements of the story, and moving the biggest event to the midpoint. However, there were also some flaws for me.

I figured out the mystery before the protagonist did, which is not that big a deal in this case. But there were some points that stretched believability in the second half (basically how he treats his woman), and in the first half there's really long scenes of blatant exposition.

In fact, I think Stewart's character calls attention to it with a line of dialogue, so Hitchcock seems to have acknowledged that flaw.