According to Hollywood, San Francisco seems to be populated almost solely by blonde femme fatales and detectives. It seems like every movie set there features one, the other, or more commonly, both. Vertigo is Hitchcock's entry into the genre. An entry that I found to be disappointing especially since it seems to be so highly regarded and often considered one of his masterpieces.
Hitchcock stalwart, Jimmy Stewart plays police detective John Ferguson. Ferguson suffers from a fear of heights and because of this fear he has retired from the police and ends up accepting an assignment from an old friend of his to follow the friend's wife around. His friend believes that his wife; Madeleine (Novak), is possessed by the spirit of her great-grandmother and that she is contemplating suicide. After Ferguson ends up saving Madeleine's life he finds himself falling in love with her and she seems to be falling for him. But this is a Hitchcock film and so things aren't what they seem.
Because of Mel Brooks' High Anxiety, I felt as though I'd seen parts of this movie before. The scenes in the tower on the spiral staircase seemed particularly familiar. Likewise Brooks managed to capture the melodrama so inherent in Hitchcock's work, including the tense and haunting soundtrack.
Like all of Hitchcock's films, there are some good things about this movie. The opening third of the film when you're still not sure what's going on and why Madeleine is behaving as she is, is the best part of the movie. Good use, especially for the time, is made of San Francisco as a location with Ferguson tailing Madeleine all over town. Hitchcock wasn't called the master of suspense for nothing and he manages to build it well often in long scenes without dialogue.
Once the story begins to resolve itself it weakens sharply. The big twist to the story happen about two-thirds of the way in and the last third is the weakest part. It's not very believable or entertaining. It tries to be a psychological thriller, but the psychology is dated (at one point Ferguson is diagnosed with suffering from melancholy as a disease) and the thrills suffer from that.
The love story is also pretty flimsy. Ferguson's love for Madeleine is old fashioned movie love where two characters fall instantly in love with each other for no concrete reason. Well, no other reason than she looks like Kim Novak anyway. Because his motives for loving her are so weak, his behavior in the last third of the movie didn't provoke any emotional response from me apart from mild bewilderment.
Technically the film is well made, although some elements seem quite dated now, I'm sure they were innovative for the time. The infamous vertigo dolly shot (pulling the camera away while zooming in at the same time) is used to good effect. Ferguson's fevered dream seems quite silly now though, with the animation and his hair waving.
Film buffs and historians may find this an interesting and well made movie, but for sheer entertainment value, there are a plethora of better Hitchock movies available.
