Vertigo

4.64
    Vertigo
    1958

    Synopsis

    A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

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    Cast

    • James StewartDet. John 'Scottie' Ferguson
    • Kim NovakMadeleine Elster / Judy Barton
    • Barbara Bel GeddesMarjorie 'Midge' Wood
    • Tom HelmoreGavin Elster
    • Henry JonesCoroner
    • Raymond BaileyScottie's Doctor
    • Ellen CorbyManager of McKittrick Hotel
    • Konstantin ShaynePop Leibel
    • Lee PatrickCar Owner Mistaken for Madeleine
    • Bess FlowersDiner at Ernie's (uncredited)

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Chicago Sun-Times

      Vertigo, which is one of the two or three best films Hitchcock ever made, is the most confessional, dealing directly with the themes that controlled his art.
    • 100

      The Guardian

      All great art has within it some irreducible, inexplicable element, beyond its cleverness and craft. Such is the hold Vertigo has. This strange, frustrating story of a haunted pervert, Hitchcock's Byronic opus, still evades capture, and refuses to be something it's not.
    • 100

      The New Yorker

      Vertigo is one of the great movies about movies, and about Hitchcock’s own way with them.
    • 100

      The Telegraph

      Profound, penetrating and unfathomable rather than (quite) perfectly formed art. Vertigo pioneered that camera effect, known as the dolly zoom, whereby the viewer (the point of view is always Stewart’s) appears to fall into an infinite abyss while remaining quite still...The film itself is that abyss, and we’re still falling into it and for it.
    • 100

      The Guardian

      Vertigo also combines in an almost unique balance Hitchcock’s brash flair for psychological shocks with his elegant genius for dapper stylishness. Like Psycho, it ends in an “o”, or maybe “oh!” The ancient house adjoining the Bates motel in Psycho certainly has an unearthly similarity to San Francisco’s creepy old McKitterick Hotel in Vertigo. [Rerelease]
    • 100

      Rolling Stone

      This dizzyingly intricate film reveals new facets each time you see it. We leave Vertigo unsettled, like Scottie, who ends up on the edge of a precipice. Hitchcock is daring us to leap. He has prepared the ultimate fix for a cinema junkie: a movie to get lost in.
    • 100

      Slant Magazine

      Alfred Hitchcock’s rich and strange masterwork.
    • 100

      Empire

      Gripping throughout with frame upon frame of standout images and superb performances from the two leads.

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