Vertigo (1958)

Vertigo seems like a highly fitting choice to begin a project dealing with the greatest movies of all time. It's supposedly the most personal film made by Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary English director whose name is almost synonymous with 'suspense' and who is commonly regarded as having made many of the greatest thrillers of all time. He's all over the IMDb Top 250 like a rash, being represented by no less than nine films: more than any other director.

I've not got much of a background in Hitchcock. Before this one I'd only seen four of his many films, though to be fair two of those, Rear Window and Psycho, are amongst the three rated highly enough to place in the top 25 here. Other than those, I've only seen the experimental Rope, which didn't impress me much, and an atmospheric silent movie he made back in England in 1926 called The Lodger.

Having only four Hitchcocks under my belt is a sad state of affairs indeed, and it's a perfect case in point as to why it's so important that I should start a project like this. How can I call myself a film fan if I've only seen four movies from the master? Well now I've seen five, and if the rest of his films (as well as all the other movies on this list that I've yet to see) hold up to this level of quality then I'm going to have a wonderful time as well as an educational one. I expected a great film but it was more than that. It's something special.

James Stewart plays a police detective who has retired from the force because his fear of heights indirectly led to the death of a colleague and he feels responsible. An old college friend then asks him to follow his wife because he fears for her life. Stewart doesn't believe the unlikely reasons for this fear but he takes the job anyway and proceeds to fall in love with her. When she dies he tries to remodel another woman into his lost love. This remodelling is what makes the film so personal to Hitchcock as he was notorious for doing exactly the same thing to his actresses.

The script goes many places after this but I won't say where because each twist affects the entire way you'll see the film. Every time I thought I knew where the story was going, good old Alfred surprised me yet again. Twice I thought the entire film was about to end and yet on it went with another twist that had me grinning inanely in admiration. If this had been Hitchcock's only film it should have cemented his reputation, but amazingly it was a commercial and critical flop on its initial release, only later becoming known as a masterpiece. Luckily for us it wasn't his only film, and there's a whole bunch more from his fifty year career for us to catch up on. I'm very much looking forward to doing exactly that.

I'm also looking forward to catching up on James Stewart too, someone who is tied to Hitchcock in many ways. Just as Hitch is represented in this list more than any other director, it's very possible that his seven starring roles mean that Stewart is represented more than any other leading actor. The films of both men here are spread over the four decades from the 1930s to the 1960s and while Stewart was honoured by the American Film Institute as the eighth recipient of their Life Achievement Award, Hitchcock had been the seventh.

I've seen about as much Stewart as I have Hitchcock. He was stunning in Rear Window and was about the only saving grace of Rope, both films also made for Hitch, and he is excellent here too, but all of this is hardly enough to warrant his reputation as one of America's most beloved performers. Maybe I'll understand that a lot better when I've seen the other six of his films here including It's a Wonderful Life which I may have seen when I was about six years old but don't remember in the slightest.

Stewart turns in a bravado performance here that is much darker than his role in Rear Window. He's the hero here too but no straightforward hero. While he only has to juggle a body cast and a penchant for voyeurism in Rear Window, he has major mental problems to deal with in Vertigo. He gradually loses his objectivity following his friend's wife, ascends into love and then descends into breakdown. As the plot unfolds we see him in many different lights, which are often far from pleasant; and the way in which we identify with him alters accordingly. It's a highly complex role but he pulls it off admirably.

He plays opposite Kim Novak who also had her work cut out for her. She is marvellous nonetheless as both Madeleine, the friend's wife that Stewart falls for, and Judy, the girl who he tries to turn into Madeleine. Novak had a difficult time making the film, partly because of the complex double role but also because she wasn't Hitchcock's original choice. He had tailored the part for Vera Miles, a former Miss America who he later used in Psycho as Janet Leigh's sister, but she became pregnant before filming started and Hitch had to find a new star. She also struggled with her director's unique methods of dealing with his cast, having to find her own inspiration as to how to play her parts.

The only other name I knew from the cast was Barbara Bel Geddes who I'd heard of but never seen as the Ewing matriarch in the TV soap Dallas. That wouldn't normally recommend her to me in the slightest, as I've always avoided soap operas on principle, but she is simply lovely in Vertigo. She has a much easier part to play than either Stewart or Novak but it still has its range and she does it very well indeed. Maybe I should stop disregarding the talent of soap actors and restrict my prejudice to daytime soap actors.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the way this project has begun. I'm only a single film in with 249 to go but I feel enriched already. It's another Hitchcock to add into my cinematic experience and another Jimmy Stewart too. I'm sure this will stand me in much better stead for the other frequent appearances of both elsewhere in this project and I'm certainly going to enjoy finding out.

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