Wednesday 30 December, BBC4 10:00pm(1958)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Synopsis
San Francisco cop 'Scottie' (Stewart) suffers a nightmarish attack of vertigo as he pursues a criminal during a rooftop chase, his inactions leading to a fellow policeman falling to his death.
After he has recovered, an old friend (Helmore) hires him to watch his strange wife (Novak), thinking she is possessed by the spirit of a long dead beauty.
'Scottie' gives chase one day and saves her from committing suicide. They fall in love, but he is unable to prevent her from jumping to her death a little later.
Desolate, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to Judy, who is the dead ringer for his lost love.
Of all the films being screened across the multitude of (in essence, very similar) TV and film channels in the UK this festive season, if I was pushed to pick a favourite then, in the absence of any silent films (that I can detect from the Radio Times pages) I would plump for this throbbingly beautiful, romantic thriller from the sure hand of 'The Master', Alfred Hitchcock, recently voted as the greatest film ever made by the influential Sight & Sound.
A million words have already been written about this film and by critics more renowned than I, but make no mistake, Vertigo is no easy cinematic ride.
Vertigo is a swirling, head f*ck maelstrom of duplicity, greed, sexual obsession, control, manipulation, mental instability and ultimately murder, all presented, as one would expect from 'Hitch', as romantic fiction.
Romantic fiction where crazed men chase frigid, damaged women to the point where they consume each other with their neuroses, but delicious romantic fiction none the less.
Hitch sugaring the psychosexual pill for us, if you will.
Star Stewart was so famous for playing the 'Ordinary Man' in films that it was a surprise for audiences to see him in such conflicted, complicated roles for director Hitchcock, but he rises to the challenge of portraying this dangerously nuanced man in love.
His hot tempered, impetuous and pushy turn is complemented by the cool, studied recalcitrance of Novak as the icy, blank object of his obsessions.
Technically adroit (ignore the campy 'nightmare' sequences though) but a tad overlong, if you haven't seen a Hitchcock film at all then make this your first.
If you think Psycho is the best film he ever made, see this and think again.
Cast & credits
Producer: Alfred Hitchcock.
Writer: Alec Coppel, Samuel Taylor.
Camera: Robert Burks.
Music: Bernard Hermann.
Sets: Henry Bumstead, Hal Pereira.
James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones, Raymond Bailey, Ellen Corby.
