VERTIGO (1958)

Movie Review from ElCriticon-AlohaCriticon

Vertigo is one of the masterpieces in the history of cinema with a trombone shot (combination of zoom and backwards traveling) included. The film offers an extraordinary psychological portrait of a man tortured by a love and sex obsession.

The plot, based on a story of treason and lies created by Pierre Bolieau and Thomas Narcejac, contains unforgettable scenes (the first prosecution, the beautiful locations of San Francisco, the change of identity…) mixing humor and death, necrophilia and life passion, nightmares and the flowery dreams characterized by a green and red chromatism (from Robert Burks ) and emphasized by Bernard Herrmann music.

The still tempo and melancholic tone that the master Alfred Hitchcock offer in his narration is the most appropriate in order to capture effectively the emotional and sensitive travel of a character (masterly interpreted by James Stewart) suffering a hard vital confussion. Besides him, the unshakeable beauty of Kim Novak in the best moment of her career (Hitchcock preferred Vera Miles in the first time for the role).

Essential film in which Alfred Hitchcock makes an homage to Luis Buñuel in a scene very similar to his film El. Outstanding emotional complexity, atmospheres, the way in which the topic of affective confussion is dealed with and the mesmerizing sensation that the whole work transmits to the mature viewer.

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