Genre: Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Length: 2h 8m 0s
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Tagline: Alfred Hitchcock engulfs you in a whirlpool of terror and tension!
Plot outline: Traumatized by a fatal incident while on the job, a detective finds himself spending his retirement days in peace and conversing with a female friend of his. An old friend of his hires him to follow his wife whom he feels is doing things behind her back that he doesn't know about. But things take a turn for the bizarre when he falls for her...or so he thinks. Summary written by Mystic80 San Francisco police detective Scottie Fergusson develops a fear of heights and is forced to retire when a colleague falls to his death during a chase. An old college friend (Gavin Elster) hires Scottie to watch his wife Madeleine who has become obsessed with the past. Scottie follows her around San Francisco and is drawn into a complex plot. Summary written by Col Needham {col@imdb.com}
Comment: One of my all-time favorite movies, though if had to choose only one Hitch film to bring on a desert island, I'd probably go for Psycho, in my opinion _the_ quintessential Hitchcock picture. The main appeal of Vertigo (and its main weakness, according to its detractors) is that the film can be viewed from many different points of view. As an almost traditional love story; as a straight detective story; as a character study of an obsessed man (as many critics pointed out, James Stewart's character has a necrophiliac attraction to Madeleine); as a supernatural thriller; as a surreal dream. People have criticized Hitchcock's choice of James Stewart as the lead, but I couldn't imagine anyone else playing the part: this is one of his greatest roles, where he had the courage to play a self-destructive, negative character, who gets more and more unpleasant as the story unfolds. Full of great, innovative ideas that were copied over and over for years to come (guess where Brian De Palma took "inspiration" from for Obsession and the museum scene in Dressed to Kill?).
IMDB Rating: 8.5
Country: USA
Language:
Subtitels: No ()
CDs: 0
| Quality: | Video (?x? @ ?.?? [[unknown] ?kb/s]) | Audio (?Hz ?bit ? chan. [[unknown] ?kb/s]) |
| Actors: | ||
| James Stewart | as | John 'Scottie' Ferguson |
| Kim Novak | as | Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton |
| Barbara Bel Geddes | as | Marjorie 'Midge' Wood |
| Tom Helmore | as | Gavin Elster |