Vertigo ***
Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
US
@ The Grand Illusion

Excellent. These relationships are all so convoluted and inappropriate that anyone involved on any end of them must be guilty of something. This struck me because so many of Hitchcock's films involve a man wrongly accused, but here even though Scottie is exploited, he exploits others just as much.

Almost every location is memorable (at least that's how it seemed to me seeing this again after five years or so) and the filmmaking pretty fluid. I wonder how red Ernie's restaurant actually is where Scottie first lays eyes on Madeleine. There's a fair amount of color manipulation throughout, but general it looks like the full frame has been processed rather than a single element like the walls around the bar.

At least as suspenseful the second time around, and the end is terrifically climactic.

Particularly during the scene where Madeleine wakes up in Scottie's apartment, I noticed how uncannily some of Terry O'Quinn's mannerisms as Locke on Lost match up with many things James Stewart does here.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb