Vertigo

A

nother Hitchcock movie starring James (Jimmy) Stewart. This one is about a police detective who decides to quit the police force when his Acrophobia (fear of heights) is the cause of a fellow officer's death.

He's taking time off, doing nothing, when a former college friend looks him up and hires him to watch his wife because he's afraid she's going to kill herself. Turns out that her great grandmother & grandmother had also killed themselves. His wife currently disappears for hours at a time and has no memory of where she's been or what she's done.

John Ferguson (Stewart) starts following Mrs. Elster (Novak) and one day she jumps into the San Francisco Bay. He saves her & takes her back to his apartment. She, of course, remembers nothing. When he leaves the room to answer the phone, she takes off.

The next day, she's leaving him a note thanking him for saving her and apologizing for leaving so abruptly. He sees her & they start "hanging out". He keeps asking her what happens & where she goes in her mind and why she's so terrified. He finally decides to take her to the place that she "dreams" about so that she can face her fears.

When they get to the old Spanish Mission, they admit that they love each other and then she runs into the bell tower and jumps off.

He goes on trial? for leaving the scene of a crime? I have no idea. It's retarded. But then he goes crazy and is in a mental institution for 6-12 months. I don't know if they made that clear in the movie.

That's all I'm going to tell you.

:-)

I've decided that Alfred Hitchcock movies are too long, LOL. They take for freaking ever trying to build up suspense and then something convoluted happens and it ends...finally.

If those looooooooooooong sequences with nothing going on except the score were cut by 75% I'd be a lot happier.

I think the "TCM Guy" said that this was said to be one of Hitchcock's best.

I guess. I mean, I certainly didn't expect the ending. Didn't really expect the "twist". Maybe I'm just too jaded by this century's movies with the quick editing and whatnot?

I don't know. I was really looking forward to this for Jimmy Stewart & because it was a Hitchcock movie. I think the movie sounds more interesting than it is. But at least now I know who Kim Novak was. She looks kind of like Harmony from "Buffy" and "Angel" to me, minus the porcine nose. :-)

Whatever. If you like Hitchcock, you might like this. But I wouldn't say that this is a "must see" movie.

That is all.