SHUT-IN MOVIES #14 - VERTIGO (1958)

I decided it was time to watch something I've never seen before that considered to be a classic. Believe it or not there are many so called classic films I've never seen, including, but not only: Dirty Dancing, Sound of Music, Gone With the Wind, Little Trouble in Big China, Rear Window, Kramer vs. Krammer and many others to numerous to mention. So, today I sat down to finish off Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic VERTIGO, starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. It's taken me two days to watch this, so I think it's safe to say it didn't engage me greatly. And having just finished watching it, I gotta say I ain't a fan, in fact I actually burst out laughing at the end, thank god I didn't see this at the NFT or I'd have been lynched. That said, there are many bits I enjoyed, the way it looks, the superb music, the sets, the matte paintings, the strange colours, the utterly superb dream sequence but overall it's downright creepy and unpleasant and not in a good way. Stewart plays an love obsessed cop with vertigo who falls in love with Kim Novak only to watch her leap to her death when he's unable to climb a tower to stop her from jumping. This film, over 2 hours in length spends its first hour or so just establishing the relationship between the two leads. And indeed for the first hour literally nothing happens, except Stewart fails to indicate at any time during the world's slowest car chase through San Fransisco while he tails the girl of his dreams. Once the girl of his dreams, actually the wife of an old college chum of his, ends up dead, having leaped to the her death from the tower, then the film finally starts to unravel the mystery and ratchet up the creepiness as Stewart fixates on a girl he sees in the streets who looks like his dead one love. He follows her back to her hotel and manipulates her into dressing and looking exactly like his dead lost love, all the time ignoring the fact that there's another girl who'd deeply in love with him (Midge Wood, played by Barbara Bel Geddes) who he doesn't seem to give two shits about waiting for him at home. Seriously, Stewart's character is a right dick. Anyway, this film winds its languid way back towards a Columbo style ending back at the tower, where his true love died for a seriously hilarious 'shock' revelation that made me burst out laughing. I often feel with certain directors that it's not 'form' to criticise their films, but for me, Vertigo was just a long shaggy dog story only saved by a very funny punchline. 7/10