Another Night With Netflix: Vertigo
C’mon, you had to see this one coming…
Synopsis from Netflix: Don’t look down! One of Alfred Hitchcock’s darkest and most compelling films tells the story of police detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), who has a crippling fear of heights. When an old friend asks him to tail his wife (Kim Novak), Scottie is drawn into a vortex of deceit, murder and obsession … and that’s just the beginning! Two highlights: a mesmerizing Bernard Herrmann score and a haunting final shot.
My thoughts: This movie could more accurately be titled Acrophobia because it is a fear of heights that brings about Ferguson’s vertigo. Indeed, the word ‘vertigo’ is used only once in the whole movie. All of that aside, this film is a thrilling tale of a retired detective hired to investigate a bizarre case and getting caught up in it. At a key moment, his acrophobia/vertigo kicks in and his subsequent reaction to the events that unfold is Hitchcock at his best. I really liked this movie, and the only thing that kept me from giving it five stars was the slow pacing it had for the first two-thirds of the running time. [Four out of five stars.]
