Seeing Vertigo on critics’ lists of all-time best films, including Time’s last week, and not remembering if I’d seen it, we rented it for TV viewing. Our first reaction was that it must have been colorized, so garish were the reds and greens. Whatever the cause, it gave the film a very dated look, along with all the artificial driving scenes. The next problem I had was with the acting, or maybe the characterizations. Kim Novak’s performance was wooden, or more accurately stoney. James Stewart was typical James Stewart, a gee-whiz naif, which didn’t comport with his role as a San Francisco police detective. And while he was clearly infatuated with her, there was little chemistry between them. I never suspected her love for Scottie until she announced it. Barbara Bel Geddes was better as Midge, but I couldn’t figure out that relationship either.
Those problems, however, paled compared to the plot. Right at the start Scottie is left dangling from a bent gutter with no visible means of rescue or escape as his police partner falls to his death. He walks with a cane for a short while afterward, but we are never told what happened, other than this causing an acute case of “vertigo.” The plot that follows, of course, pivots around a murder/fake suicide that exceeds Scottie’s rooftop escape for implausibility. In order to dispose of his wealth (and inherit her fortune), shipping magnate Gavin Elster convinces his girlfriend to impersonate his wife (no one else notices?), have her pretend to be haunted by an ancestor and seduce his old friend Scottie, and then lure him up a belltower firm in the belief that Scottie won’t be able to reach the top, where he is waiting with his dead wife, ready for defenestration. Oh, and then escape from the belltower unnoticed, another point that Hitchcock finessed. Surely there were better, safer ways to do away with one’s spouse.
In fairness, the film’s followers focus on its story of obsession, not its murder plot. Scottie is clearly obsessed, but it’s not pretty, nor particularly convincing. He browbeats Judy (the resurrected Madeleine) in an over-the-top manner that keeps raising the questions, what does he think he’s doing and why does she put up with it? When he is so obsessed, though, how does he flip the switch so completely when he sees her necklace? Would he really have even noticed it? And how would he have made such a quick mental calculation? In short, the whole film was one big, dated implausibility that, to my mind, ranks well behind The Man Who Knew Too Much, North By Northwest, Psycho, 39 Steps, Rear Window, Strangers On a Train and probably others.
