21 November 2009

Dark roots

Vertigo

(1958)
Hey, so how many Hitchcock movies for me is this in the past year or so? Hang on a sec . . .

Looks like 31, dating back to Mr. and Mrs. Smith about a year ago, before I'd decided to watch all the Hitch I could this year. This is one of the ones I know best, and it's one of the most nearly perfect (though I wouldn't have fallen for the scam with Kim Novak as the bait; she always seems kinda horsey to me; then again, James Stewart's makeup makes him look at least a decade past his actual 50 years).

Hitch often gets credit from people who haven't really paid attention to It's a Wonderful Life for discovering the darkness in Stewart. As anyone who paid attention to the previous sentence knows, that's not the case, but geez, he's creepy here. Gets what he deserves, yo.

Bonus also for one of the best Bernard Herrmann scores and one of the best Saul Bass title sequences.

No comments: