re: "Vertigo" recently replaced "Citizen Kane" as the GMOAT in

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Rex

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You like great movies.

But I disagree. I don't think there is anything boring or pretentious about Citizen Kane ala Tree of Life.

I've never understood the love for this movie. I did a mini-marathon of Hitchcock movies last year and Vertigo was one.

I thought it was almost laughably bad at times ESPECIALLY the end. Movie would have been 1000 times better if he pushed her.

Why exactly was she so startled by a nun coming up the stairs? And it wasn't even just a slight jump from being spooked. She was WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY too far from the ledge. I didn't like the movie overall, but that scene at the end was poorly shot to the point I despise the movie.

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GMOAT

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Children of Men climbs the charts, the more I watch it.

Those lists are terrible. Nothing but love for stuff like Citizen Kane and Vertigo.

The Godfather skullfcks both of those movies.

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Can't think of a third ATM.

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Aliens? You said it earlier

What I wrote in 2008:

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8. Vertigo (1957)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore

“And if you lose me, then you'll know I loved you. And I wanted to go on loving you.”

I know it’s not #1 on our countdown, but I believe this is the Greatest Movie Ever Made so my entry will treat it as such. Vertigo is, not to put to fine a point on it, a perfect movie. It was also a commercial and critical failure upon its original release, which just goes to show what critics know. It is a movie whose reputation grows every year, and now it stands as the definitive Hitchcock film, the magnum opus of the world’s greatest film director. It is both an artistic and technical triumph (seriously, Hitchcock invented the dolly-out, zoom-in shot for this movie to simulate vertigo).

First, it’s downright creepy, yet you never feel the movie is as twisted as it actually is because, well, it’s Jimmy Stewart. Hitchcock had a habit of having Stewart subtly play sexual deviance (voyeurism in Rear Window, homosexuality in Rope), but in this film, Stewart essentially plays a necrophiliac, as he tries to remake a living girl in a dead woman’s image. It’s lost love taken to its perverse extreme.

The movie also works as a meta-commentary on Hitchcock himself. It is a little disturbing that a plot which revolves around manipulation and perversion is Hitchcock’s most personal film. But it really is. He famously viewed his actors as mere pawns for him to move around and serve his artistic vision, and this movie is about that abuse only in real life. Hitchcock makes over Kim Novak just as Jimmy Stewart does in the film, and he treats her with about the same level of care and respect. It’s no wonder she left the film industry shortly after this film and Stewart and Hitchcock would never work together again. The film was meta before we even knew what meta was.

Finally, the film is just exquisitely crafted. There’s not a wasted shot in the movie. Hitchcock’s use of mirrors, spirals, music, and lighting is just dizzying to contemplate. Scotty even first notices Madeline through the mirror. It’s a movie that is never far away from the dream world, and we’re never sure what is the reality of Scotty and what is his own delusion. It’s a movie I’ve watched, no kidding, at least 30 times. I find something new in every viewing. It is an enjoyable puzzle of a film.

-Baloo

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It was also a commercial and critical failure upon its original release, which just goes to show what critics know. It is a movie whose reputation grows every year

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This always bugs me. I get a good movie tanking at the box office and not getting a ton of great reviews. But not all time greats. I mean was it cool to hate on this movie back then? Critics play follow the leader too often. If its considered an all time great movie, there isn't going to be a critic in the world who will dog it for fear of being a bad critic. Vertigo was poorly received by critics then, well when did it start catching on? One critic loved it, five others saw that he loved it and now they do too. Then 20 others see that they loved it now because if those guys like it, it's bound to be a great movie. Now every critic on the planet loves it. This could be applied to a lot of movies. Every year metacritics highest rated movie are foreign and indie flicks. Give me a break. I love both, but just because they are indie and foreign and it's cool to love them doesn't make them the best films year after year. Let me get off this soap box.

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Hitchcock makes over Kim Novak just as Jimmy Stewart does in the film, and he treats her with about the same level of care and respect. It’s no wonder she left the film industry shortly after this film and Stewart and Hitchcock would never work together again. The film was meta before we even knew what meta was.

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I've never heard this before. Anymore to this story you could tell?

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Finally, the film is just exquisitely crafted. There’s not a wasted shot in the movie. Hitchcock’s use of mirrors, spirals, music, and lighting is just dizzying to contemplate.

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This is what I love about Hitchcock. Dude was a master editor that I doubt we"ll ever see anything like it again. I talk about this in my DWADS write up that never got posted.

He didn't say she left forever. Was she out of the game long?

Interesting take:

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Kane was never my favorite, yet it was a beautiful, dynamic choice.

Generations of film-lovers (typified by Francois Truffaut’s homage to Citizen Kane in Day for Night) agreed that Kane was “the movie that made more filmmakers want to make movies.”

But Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 romantic tragedy, has inspired few filmmakers to make movies. (Try finding its visual lushness and aural extravagance among Indies!) And it’s doubtful if Vertigo roused many film critics (camp-followers of said impoverished Indies and Hollywood blockbusters) to write more insightfully about cinema than did their dismissive 1958 predecessors.

So Vertigo doesn’t herald a revolution in cinematic appreciation; rather, it represents warped consensus. Its choice merely replaces Kane to show a new era’s unoriginal taste and obsessive interest in pathology and soullessness that’s been building in certain film cliques at least since the film‘s 1996 reissue. The herd mentality rules.

Sight & Sound’s editor Nick James analyzed: “The new cinephilia seems to be not so much about films that strive to be great art, such as Citizen Kane, and that use cinema‘s entire arsenal of effects to make a grand statement, but more about works that have personal meaning to the critic. Vertigo is the ultimate [millennial] critics’ film because it is a dreamlike film about people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and each other to fit a kind of cinema ideal of the ideal soul mate."

James inadvertently nails cinephilia’s deterioration–from idealizing cinema that spoke to and edified the general public to solipsistic criticism that coddles a nihilistic, class-based coterie.

Vertigo appeals to a fragmented culture that boasts of self-absorption - Vertigo is a 21st century favorite–and perfectly titled for that.

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