Movie #36: Released in 1958, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 128 minutes. Seen it before.

LetterBoxd score: 4 stars

I’ve seen Vertigo before, maybe 15 years ago, probably on a laptop screen in London. I remember thinking at the time that I could see why film critics loved it (at the time, it was either the #1 or #2 movie on the Sight and Sound list). It’s use of color as a means of transmitting information is very overt; it’s a weird and complex story about identity (can you really fall in love with a person who is playing at being another person, and then fall in love again by getting them to play at being that person again?). There’s something very much like film in that.

But I didn’t love the movie and never felt compelled to rewatch. Like Citizen Kane, it’s intellectually interesting, clearly a bold move forward in terms of style, and so on. But the story never moves me very much. I think that has to come first, and then the intellectual stuff comes later – a sort of excuse to continue pondering the movie, giving it new dimensions, which multiply and enhance the pre-existing connection. But if you don’t have that connection, then, eh, I just don’t care that much. Movies are probably not the best means of conveying interesting new conceptual ideas on an intellectual level; just write an essay if that’s what you want. They’re an empathy machine, so when that part of the equation doesn’t work for me, the rest doesn’t matter so much.

Why doesn’t it work? I don’t know. Part of the problem might be that the story feels a bit unbalanced. The bulk of the running time is Stewart falling in love, and trying to figure out a mystery (that ultimately is resolved in Scooby Doo fashion and can be entirely jettisoned afterwards); but that all feels like prologue to the real story, which is about his obsession with someone he lost, and his destructive attempt to recreate her. But that story feels, almost rushed to me.

Assorted other thoughts:

• To some degree, this movie is suffering from excess hype. If it snuck up on you, it might be amazing.
• Shout out to Midge. I want more midge.
• Vertigo’s opening credits make the other 35 movies that have come before it feel staid and trapped in the past. An unblinking face; lips; an eye. Spirals.

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest films ever made?

I can see that if you fall for this movie – if the empathy machine works – then there is so much intellectually to chew on in this story.

Next: Imitation of Life