Vertigo is the first Alfred Hitchcock film I’ve seen, and hooooly crap what have I missed. I can’t talk about the plot because ruining it would probably make him roll over in his grave (as well as pissing off more than a few people) so I’ll just delve into what makes Vertigo an awesome movie. Apart from inventing a few new camera techniques (which, again, I can’t talk about without ruining the plot), Vertigo uses some pretty awesome sets and San Francisco locations (seeing my home city 50 years ago was kind of trippy, but very cool. I recognized one of the buildings that is central to the story). The main draw of Vertigo, however, is the acting and the story.
The story is a mystery set in San Francisco involving a detective attempting to get to the bottom of a situation (I know that sounds like a really lame explanation, but I really don’t want to give anything away). It’s very rare that a mystery actually keeps me entertained until the end – most of the time the twist is fairly obvious and once I’ve uncovered it, I kinda lose interest. Vertigo is the rare case of a mystery plot done really well – you don’t get the plot twist until it happens, and when it does, it totally throws you for a loop. I had to watch the scene twice before I fully understood what had just happened. After the twist, the plot quickly advances into ” thats awesome and creepy wait whaaaaaat” territory as it gets crazier and crazier until the finale, which I didn’t expect, and which totally blew my mind. The acting is also incredible – Alfred Hitchcock has this way of extracting the best performances from people, and both the main character and the main female lead put in insanely twisted, beautiful performances.
It’s actually really hard to write a review about a movie without talking about the plot at all, so I’ll wrap up. Go see this movie.
Score: 5/5 (A 5 is a movie I absolutely loved, would see again many times, and would recommend to absolutely everybody. I probably think it should be rated higher on the list than it currently is.)
