Rating of
3.5/4
A mystifying portrait of insanity and obsession!
MovieAddict - wrote on 03/28/13
John “Scottie” Ferguson (played by James Stewart), is a San Francisco policeman who is haunted by his severe acrophobia, which is caused from the guilt of an accidental death he feels responsible for. Due to Scottie's condition he feels confined to secluding himself from police work, until an old college friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) asks him a favor. The favor is to "spy" on his beautiful wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), whom he fears has become possessed spirit of her great grandmother Carlotta Valdez. Or is she? As we are about to learn, nothing is quite as it seems at first.
After overcoming some initial reluctance, Scottie takes the job but soon finds himself captivated by the mysterious woman who he later saves from drowning after she unexpectedly jumps into San Francisco Bay. The fact that Madeline is married does not deter Scottie, the possibility that she is either haunted or out of her mind slows him not a step so when she commits suicide, Scottie is traumatized, and subsequently suffers a nervous breakdown until he finds another girl with a passing resemblance to Madeline called Judy Barton but then he learns her secret......
James Stewart gives a brilliant performance as an ordinary guy who's caught up in an extraordinary sequence of events. Kim Novak as Madeleine is remote and aloof and successfully creates the sense of mystique which is such an important element of what makes her character so compelling.
The story is so gripping that it’s hard to take you eyes off the screen as you wonder what happens next. The cinematography of Vertigo is simply breathtaking: the rescue scene in San Francisco Bay with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background couldn't be any more perfectly framed. An excellent masterpiece by the mystery master Hitchcock!
