“Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice.”

The foundation that most all of cinema stands on. There are plenty of films in Hitchcock’s oeuvre in which that sentiment could also be applied, but Vertigo towers above the rest. Everything I love about film can be found in Vertigo. It’s the culmination of every idea Hitchcock ever tampered with done to absolute perfection. It’s also a technical marvel; with Robert Burks god-level cinematography employing Technicolor better than any film of the era, Bernard Herrmann’s haunting and legendary score which is a masterpiece in its own right, and of course Hitchcock’s meticulously brilliant direction. Vertigo sees Old Hollywood reaching its peak, and going further than anyone at the time likely thought possible.

Most film buffs can trace the moments that shaped their love of cinema, and the impact Vertigo had on me 10 years ago feels as powerful now as it did then. I can remember sitting alone in a dark room upstairs in my childhood home and being completely hypnotized by the images and sounds presented to me. I’ll never forget the moment I first saw Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak together in that lonely hotel room, washed in lush neon greens, with Herrmann’s gorgeous music swelling up into a crescendo as the two characters embrace once again. This was cinema. I was in tears. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It’s moments like those that I’ll always chase in my endless quest to find an experience as perfect as that. Oddly enough, that seems to mirror what the film itself is trying to do.

Vertigo is so endlessly fascinating because it asks questions that can likely never be answered with fact. The amount of different interpretations I’ve encountered regarding the meaning of the film are so vast. Some might seem pretty ridiculous while others appear more grounded, but I can honestly see the validity in almost all of them. Life is nothing but a series of repetitive loops, and Vertigo examines this idea brilliantly. Hitchcock almost tricks you into being just as invested in Scotty’s plight as Scotty himself. It’s only once you pull yourself back from it all that you can begin to peel away the layers of psychosis, obsession, and darkness lurking somewhere in his gaze. You could easily take the shot of Scotty abruptly waking up from a nightmare, then tag it onto the end of the film and it would make perfect sense.

Dreams within dreams within dreams...and so on.