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Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock's mesmerizing Vertigo opens as a fairly downbeat mystery drama and progressively paces up, narratively as well as thematically, to a grand finale. In between, the master of suspense implements a narrative that functions on more levels than perhaps any of his movies. From an initial explicit occult theme springs a psychological study that precedes the genre of psychological thrillers. The story spins around the brilliantly conveyed Jimmy Stewart character – a retired detective and traditional loner who falls in love for the first time when stalking an old friend's possibly suicidal wife. Stewart's eventual obsession with her suggests elements of necrophilia and a 'lost love' symptom that evokes the self-explanation of Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's Lolita. Jimmy Stewart has one of the most challenging roles of his career, but Hitchcock's real genius with the Scottie character is the way he suddenly alters the film's point of view: When Judy Barton is introduced, Scottie moves away from us and becomes a man of mystery whose nature we can't quite fathom. It's an expertly executed and extremely effective twist, because it is a development completely opposite to what is usually seen in a protagonist. The Kim Novak character is equally complex. Her emotional bond to the Jimmy Stewart character is based on a peculiar dependency founded in her fatal impersonation. Kim Novak (who got the role after Hitchcock favourite Vera Miles withdrew due to pregnancy) delivers the performance of her life. She is puzzling, charming, frantic and sexy. The magnetism between her and Stewart, which at first seems unlikely, eventually seems inevitable. It's a love story that is anything but traditional, but its magnitude is unparalleled. A Hitchcock movie without a murder (and the planning of it) is a very rare sight, and you won't find it here either. The difference this time is that it isn't the solving of the murder that is the most important matter, but rather how two of those implicated handle it. Vertigo is essentially a romantic story, but it is wrapped in a multi-layered mystery and presented in a visually unique way. The colours captured by cinematographer Robert Burks aren't as smooth as in Rear Window (although his 1950s San Francisco is uniquely documented), but they certainly have a more allegorical quality. In Scottie's inventive dream sequence and in the famous stairway scene, Hitchcock reaches his peak in visual effects (which weren't normally something he paid much attention to), and along with Bernard Herrmann's brilliant score, it makes Vertigo one of the most enthralling movies for all the viewer's senses.
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