Vertigo

After having recently overtaken Citizen Kane as Sight and Sound's greatest film of all time, I thought I should re-watch Vertigo. Luckily, ITV obliged by putting it on one of their channels last week. I'd seen the film a while ago, and clips of it since, but never been as excited as I felt I should be. We’re always told that the greatest works of art take maturity to appreciate. Why this should be is debatable – surely if they were great, we would like them at once? It depends on our definition of ‘great’. I think most people’s would be something like: does it reward repeated viewing? Enough has been written about this film, I’m sure, but one thing it does do is reward repeated viewing. Watching it again I began to unpick the many layers there are to this movie. It is slow, careful and subtle in the way it carries its audience along. At its centre is the impossibility of desire – what he wants is a woman who never existed. This of course appeals to modern critics greatly. We should also point to the voyeurism of Stewart’s character – this is essentially our own. We too, like him, want to stand in the shadows (the cinema) and watch what she is doing. We read her actions as a language that we must translate (she is silent until he rescues her from the river). There were still moments that frustrated me – such as the famous ‘plot hole’ when she seemingly disappears from the hotel, and the ending itself. The brutality of Stewart’s character is hard to watch. It is justified anger, but there is also something beyond this, an anger almost at his own creation. Then there is her fall – why is she afraid of the nun? Is it an accident, or does she throw herself? Lastly, what happens to Midge’s character? There is an alternate ending that shows her together with Stewart’s character, and this we assume is what will eventually happen: he’ll return to her, albeit unhappily. I return, though, to the list itself. I’ve hinted that Vertigo’s new position at the top could be down to the taste of modern critics. Philip French wrote an interesting article about the changes in cinematic fashion which is worth reading, and he backs up my conclusion. Does ranking films really mean anything? Isn’t a better system Halliwell’s star rating? The top ten doesn't include a film beyond 1968, which makes it quite meaningless to the majority of filmgoers. The appeal of ranking is strong, and induces fruitful discussion, but it is enough for me to note that Veritgo is one of the greatest films of all time. I don’t need to rank them.