V is For Vertigo

 A to Z Challenge

A Month At The Movies

This year I am copying from a myriad of other A to Z  challengers by reprinting the same synopsis about my theme with every letter.  You can skip over this part if you want to.  

I love movies and have decided to share with you a movie each day that I have enjoyed to one degree or another.  With each entry, I'll give a brief synopsis of the film, share a positive and negative review from Rotten Tomatoes ( a website, I didn't use much at all until preparing for the challenge), discuss its resiliency (the theme of the A to Z challenge this year), and other tidbits like whether the film may appear in my top 100 film list, which I have been revamping this year. I think that's enough in the way of introduction, considering you'll be reading it (hopefully) 4  more times this month.

Film: Vertigo (1958)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

By Saul Bass - http://aliceovolk.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/vertigo-1958-usa-movie-poster-art-by-saul-bass-james-stewart-in-alfred-hitchcocks-vertigo1.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25318666

I haven't seen this movie for a while so I went tot he library today and checked it out and am watching it as I make this post.  I've been watching for an over an hour, and am at the point of the movie where the pieces should be coming together but they are not.  

Positive Tomato: One of Hitchcock's finest achievements, layering drama, a love story, adventure, and hair-raising suspense into a psychological murder-mystery that simply has no peers. Mike Massie - Gone With The Twins 

Negative Tomato: Even such a master-craftsman as director Alfred Hitchcock sometimes forgets that more than enough is too much, as he proves in this photogenic San Francisco suspense-mystery, which is still badly in need of the cutter's shears. Clyde Gilmour - Maclean's Magazine

Jimmy Stewart starring in his 4th Alfred Hitchcock film plays a retired detective who is asked by an old friend to protect his wife from herself, but all is not as it seems.  

Leyostone Tube Station

By Mike Quinn, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45941673

I just got to the point of the big plot twist, I had forgotten all about it.  Things are getting interesting, I'm not sure how its going to end.

Resiliency: This movie is a psychological thriller in every sense of the word.  The way the killer operates here is to steal all of Stewart's resiliency.  He is unable to move forward so instead he moves backward.

Top 100: I just finished watching the film , and I am leaning towards the verdict of the negative tomato rather than  the positive one.  I mentioned in a previous review, that I don't know what my #1 Hitchcock film is, well It is not Vertigo.

I was disappointed in the ending.  It made sense and it kept me guessing until the end.  I just didn't like how it played out.  One reason is that Barbara Bel Geddes isn't in the last act of that film and she made every scene she was in so much better by her presence.   Bel Geddes who played the matriarch in the T.V. soap Dallas, plays an interesting role in this movie.  I would have liked to see her utilized more in the film.  Not to say that the star Kim Novak doesn't do a good job, she does.  It's just I fount myself rooting more for Bel Geddes than Novak.

A to Z Connections: This is the second Alfred Hitchcock directed film in the challenge (North by Northwest).  

There are 3 A to Z connections with It's A  Wonderful Life: 

• They both star Jimmy Stewart.
• They both have a scene where Stewart jumps into water to save someone who doesn't need saving.
• Neither did well in their original cinematic runs and over the course of time became more and more well regarded.  They are both in the top 25 of the American Film Institutes (AFI) Top 100 Film List

Next Time: Will there be swans?