Vertigo (1958)

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  BarneyNuttall

  9 / 10

  For those who have never seen Vertigo before, it's important to take the plot with a pinch of salt. There are moments in the film where you'll find yourself disappointingly exasperated at what has happened, particularly at the film's big reveal. While Hitchcock himself regretted the story's logical flaws, Vertigo is not a film about logic. It is a hallucinogenic dream where things repeat themselves and San Fransisco's streets are a labyrinth of desire.
  
  The film also works as a retrospective for Hitchcock's film making. While the film's first half seems typically Hitchcockian, it's second half is a commentary on his own experiences with filmmaking and directing women in particular. The green colour that follows Kim Novak's mysterious Madeleine Elster is hypnotic and illusory. These qualities are the essential elements of Vertigo; it's in the title itself.
  
  One of the film's key scenes takes place in a forest. The lovestruck Detective 'Scottie' (James Stewart) walks through the dark pine woods with Madeleine Elster. They come to a sign which shows a cross-section of a tree, displaying the many lifetimes a tree lives through. It is here where the film's illusory nature is at its peak, where the world that the characters inhabit becomes a hall of mirrors or a swirling, technicolor vortex. We are just waiting to hit the bottom.

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