Vertigo

A perpetually tedious and uninvolving effort from Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo follows former detective John Ferguson (James Stewart) as he agrees to monitor the movements of a friend’s wife (Kim Novak’s Madeleine) – with John’s fast-growing obsession with the woman eventually leading to disastrous consequences. Vertigo‘s admittedly engrossing opening – the film kicks off with an exciting foot chase – gives way to an almost oppressively dull midsection in which hardly anything of interest occurs, as scripters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor offer up an uneventful narrative revolving entirely around John’s aforementioned obsession with Novak’s bland character. The total lack of chemistry between Stewart and Novak is merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of the movie’s problems, with the bulk of the first half devoted entirely to John’s pursuit of Madeleine and his eventually romance with the character. Hitchcock never gives the viewer a single reason to care about any of this and it’s clear, too, that the glacial pace only compounds the film’s arms-length atmosphere, with the screenplay’s absence of compelling attributes ensuring that Vertigo, for the most part, feels like a short film that’s been expanded to an often interminable 128 minutes. And while the movie does boast a handful of engrossing images and sequences – eg the justifiably iconic climax – Vertigo ultimately comes off as a fairly disastrous misfire that’s almost entirely devoid of engrossing, attention-grabbing elements.

** out of ****