Vertigo: Best Film Ever?

Out of all the Hitchcock films my two equal favourites are Rear Window and The Birds

The Crying game is a seriously underrated masterpiece.

It really is two movies in one, the part with Forrest Whitaker which has a really shocking conclusion and then the romance afterwards.

Irish cinema had some real great movies in the 90's, Crying game, In the name of the Father and Some Mothers Son.

bwfc71 wrote:Out of all the Hitchcock films my two equal favourites are Rear Window and The Birds

I think Vertigo is on a different level to The Birds, which is a great film and totally unique. You can't beat James Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo. It teaches us so much about the human psyche and the nature of love and identity

I also think Vertigo came deep from within Hitchcock's psyche. He was renowned for falling for his leading ladies and trying to mould them.

Anyway I will say no more about it, I don't want to pre-empt or spoil the viewing of anyone who watches it this weekend.

largehat wrote:

Angry Dad wrote:i'm a romantic bastard at heart.

We need another thread which enables you to share more of your romantic stories, AD. I love 'em.

Well i have this thing about Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter. They can have me if they want but has to be a threesome.

Boring I know but I would still pick Citizen Kane.

Films that had a big impact on me - not necessarily "best films" - include Battleship Potemkin, Bad Timing, Grave of the Fireflies, Chinatown, The Silence, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

I shall certainly be giving Vertigo another look though.

I've not seen Vertigo yet. I've seen Psycho and Rear Window and really enjoyed both.

My favourite film is American Beauty. I'm blown away every time I see it. Whether it's the best film ever or not, I'm not sure. A lot of it comes down to personal preference.

largehat wrote:

Hipster_Nebula wrote:

Mulholland Dr, Manhattan, Chungking Express, Another Earth are all films that have really "spoken to me" sounds pompous in the extreme but isn't that what great art should do? Move you?

I'm glad you said that, Hipster, it's what I was trying to say earlier in the thread about films which have changed my life.

Not all my favourite films have this quality we're talking about. I love The Producers because it is hysterical but it's not profound.

Besides Vertigo, I found Hitchcock's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' and 'Rear Window' to be profound, I find Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver to be profound.

The most profound British movie I can think of off the top of my head is The Crying Game. Never has a film deceived me so much, you watch it thinking it's about one thing and it's about something completely different.

I found The Long Good Friday to be very profound, as was Dead Man's Shoes

Get Carter and Performance. Also a film called Death Line.



The film's plot concerns a family of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers dwelling in the disused lines of the London Underground tube network. The last member of the family frequently visits the neighbouring Russell Square and Holborn stations to pick off passengers for food, then takes them back to the gruesome 'pantry' at an incomplete station.

At the climax, when finally cornered and with his wife and the last of his family members dead from disease, the cannibal screams a corrupted form of "Mind the doors!", having picked it up parrot-fashion from the guards on the Underground trains.

Watched Vertigo again last night. Yes a very good film which benefits from more than one viewing but I don't understand why critics believe this is the best film ever. The plot is very contrived and contains at least two "icebox" scenes (Hitchcock's own term for the kind of scene that hits you after you've gone home and start getting food out of the icebox/fridge). How did Kim Novak vanish from the hotel? Some of the expository dialogue is very clunky: the first scene at Midge's apartment, the letter than Novak writes and then tears up, etc.

And the scene that most irritates me ...




[PLOT SPOILER ALERT]






... the complete absence of any reaction from Novak when the man she loves shows up out of the blue at her hotel room. This isn't an actress hiding her reaction, this is an actress showing no reaction at all.

xmiles wrote:



[PLOT SPOILER ALERT]






... the complete absence of any reaction from Novak when the man she loves shows up out of the blue at her hotel room. This isn't an actress hiding her reaction, this is an actress showing no reaction at all.

I often wonder about Novak 'no-selling' that event too. The only thing I can think of is that Hitchcock wanted the audience to think of Judy as a separate person to Madeleine and to discover that they are categorically one and the same a few minutes later during the flashback.

Obviously it's the same actress, but if she had reacted at the point of opening that door it would have given the game away a bit earlier than Hitchcock intended... 5 minutes later.

That's how I've always looked upon that, anyway.

Its personal opinion of course so i dont see how a film could be best ever, didn,t rate vertigo but rate Bullet with mcqueen as a great film not the greatest though, dont think i could pick just one.Oh yeah and Vanishing point another of my favs.

Harry Brown i liked, i like any vigilante film.

There's just something about a piece of shit getting his head blown off.

Angry Dad wrote:There's just something about a piece of shit getting his head blown off.