Vertigo

THE HITCHCOCK PROJECTFilm 22 of 30 22 - Vertigo Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice. I saw Vertigo for the first time the way a lot of people end up doing: in college during my Intro to Film class. Among the catalog of the most studied director in film history, none of his films are academic fodder quite the way Vertigo is. I remember being really entranced by the film but not really knowing why and by the end of the year I had forgotten much of it. Revisiting the film near the home stretch of this Hitchcock marathon has been a real reminder of how powerful and different Vertigo is from everything else I've seen in his filmography. From the opening sequence, Vertigo moves in such a singular fashion, always teetering on the edge of surrealist fantasy, keeping everything at a distance that can feel both alienating and invite you deeper in. I confess I still don't know what to do with much of Vertigo. A lot of the more significant scenes almost washed over me in a haze of dreamy images, consciously unreal. Nobody could make a film that interrogates its characters like Vertigo does, no one else would construct its second act the way Hitchcock does. It's a film I have a lot of strong feelings on and yet am unable to really articulate them. Kim Novak is among the more bewitching ghosts in cinema, Jimmy Stewart expertly leverages his everyman qualities here, and I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Midge. Another rewatch or two might expose more of my thoughts on this film, but I'll be damned if it isn't something really special all these years later and a more than worthy candidate for Hitchcock's best film.