Just voted the Best Film of All Time this  1958 release starring James Stewart and Kim Novak builds up to a frantic climax with the audience wondering just what is going on.

It must have stood the test of time well however initial reaction to it was somewhat scathing.  Time magazine summed up the film with the words ‘The old master has turned out another Hitchcock-and-bull story in which the mystery is not so much who dunnit but who cares ……. ‘ and Saturday Review stated ‘ Hitchcock’s occasional bursts of slam-bang action, cinematic sleight of hand, and his inventive use of colour cannot sustain interest through the long pull of his slender narrative’

This film was made in VistaVision a process already mentioned in an earlier post and in Technicolor.

The comments about Hitchcock’s cinematic sleight of hand rather sums his style up. Such things as the expectation of someone sinister coming in from one side of the screen when Hitchcock brings him in from the other – this technique is very noticeable in Psycho when the detective is attacked and stabbed at the top of the stairs in the Bates Motel.

Vertigo focuses on the James Stewart character’s fear of heights which comes from an incident at the very start of the film and this is the fear that until the final frames of the film stops him from discovering what we all have come to know about the girl Kim Novak.

This is a good film although I dont think it figures as one of my all-time greats.

Hitchcock’s next film, North By NorthWest is a wonderful piece of cinema keeping us on out toes throughout the chase across America. Ths story does remind me of Saboteur though where Robert Cummings is again chased across the USA ending up at the top of the Statue of Liberty – to me a breathtaking climax on a par with almost any other film.