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Hailed as hitchcocks ultimate cinematic masterpiece this tale of obsession phobia and murder stars stewrt as a troubled detective obsessed with a lost love and her lookalike. Contains: feature commentary with associate producer herbert coleman and restoration team robert a. Harris and james c. Kats and more. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 09/02/2003 Starring: James Stewart Barbara Bel Geddes Run time: 129 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. --Jim Emerson

Customer Reviews:

• Still keeps its balance
  Vertigo, like many films of the 1950s, is showing its age a bit. The movie conventions of the day -- in which a man follows a strange woman into her hotel room and then strong-arms her into distant buildings -- do seem quite dated (not to say sinister) to modern eyes. Still "Vertigo" retains the creepy charm that Hitchcock intended, and results in a psychological thriller of surprising darkness.
  
  Scotty Ferguson is a police detective whose recent near fall from a tall building during a chase gave him an unshakable case of acrophobia and forced his retirement from the force. With plenty of time on his hands, he takes a commission from an old college chum to tail his wife, Madeleine Elster, an attractive blond with an unhealthy interest in a mysterious, long-dead California woman. Unlike her husband, Scotty doesn't believe that the wife is actually possessed by the dead woman's spirit. But he is strangely and increasingly intrigued by her beauty, melancholy and evident suicidal tendencies. After she takes a plunge into San Francisco Bay, the two fall in love, for reasons unclear to me, until tragedy parts them. Scotty, in grief over his lost love, becomes obsessed with her, seeing her in every light-haired woman he meets. Soon, he latches onto red-headed Judy Barton, and can't stop trying to change her, piece by piece, to resemble Madeleine.
  
  The premise of romantic obsession is pretty strange, but is quite watchable. Jimmy Stewart handled the role adequately, often seeming unsure of how to express his twisted emotions. I was disappointed that Hitchcock's directorial style left out so much of his characters' emotional development. Perhaps it was acceptable in the '50s for characters to move suddenly from disinterest to obsession, with none of the intermediate stages. But for me it was weird and distracting. Still, I had to admire Kim Novak's range, moving from pathetic to earthy over the course of the film.
  
  The neat twist in the middle of the film, coinciding with Stewart's switch from Madeleine to Judy, revived my flagging interest in the movie whose plot line was seemingly set. The abrupt ending did not have the impact it was evidently supposed to have (as indicated by loud and desperate cues from the musical score) but was pleasing enough.
  
  "Vertigo"'s biggest misstep was Stewart's silly long-lost love interest, Midge, played by Barbara Bel Geddes. That she and Jimmy were old college sweethearts, and that both were unmarried and still palling around years later was hard to believe. I assume that this otherwise unnecessary plot line was added only to titillate (she drew underwear ads!) and as a red herring to suggest a potential love triangle. The "special effect" -- which attempted to depict Stewart's vertiginous malady -- were almost comically obvious, obviously shot with interlocking, telescoping boxes that represented a stairwell.
  
  The DVD extras were limited to a viewing of the censor's lame ending to the movie, plus some short descriptions of the movie's psychological aspects. The colorizing was fairly good, except in very dark scenes (including one in which a character was completely obscured) and when one scene faded into another.
  
  All told, "Vertigo" was worthwhile to watch. In fifty years, it has lost a bit of its weird punch, but gained more thanks to a change in American culture and film conventions, but it is still entertaining, creepy and worth a watch....more info
• Hitchcock's Masterpiece.
  By far the best of all Hitchcock's films, in my opinion, and I've seen them all. Kim Novak shines. ...more info
• You Were a Very Apt Pupil
  The script has James Stewart deliver this line not once but twice near the end of this once-in-a-lifetime movie.
  
  The observation underscores a simultaneous strength and weakness of the movie. How plausible is it that someone could be so overtaken by a "job" of assuming someone else's identity, for money or love, that they would complete that job with such conviction? However, the movie's acceptance of that plausibility is itself questioned by Stewart's pleading and accusatory statement.
  
  "You did such a good job that you convinced me to love the person you became," he says to her in these lines.
  
  But the movie's greatest resonance is that we all do this when we fall in love. Love's noblest outcome is that the lover strives to become everything her partner comes to desire, and can define no other role for herself than the one she has assumed. "Why couldn't you learn to love just me instead of the person I imitated to gain your love?"
  
  The timeless quality of this film is that, in the coldest and seemingly most hopeless terms, Hitchcock tells us, honestly and simply, that romantic love is mutual deception at best and narcissism at worst.
  
  If you don't get scared off the tower by an approaching nun, try jumping off...
  
  This sounds really depressing, but underneath that is the film's haunting and puzzling final visual image, Stewart is unafraid to look down, and see reality for what it is. He is cured of his illusions and, nasty as that shock was, he is now healthy. Hitch's message is that delusions, even romantic delusions, help nobody, and that honesty is much, much better than overadaptive madness....more info
• Veritgo
  I bought this as a gift for my son. He really likes Alfred Hitchcock and
  loved this movie. And Jimmy Stewart gave an awesome performance. ...more info
• Alfred Hitchcock's Masterpiece
  Alfred Hitchcock made "Vertigo" at the height of his creative power. I first saw it in 1984, during its first release in almost twenty years, and viewed it over a hundred times since. In 1996, James Katz and Robert Harris painstakingly restored it, and although I have some issues with the restoration of the audio tracks (there are some sound cues missing, a couple obvious tape drop-outs from Herrmann's soundtrack), "Vertigo" would've disappeared without the TLC they put into saving it from total deterioration. It is this restoration that is on this DVD.
  What really makes "Vertigo" stand out is its synthesis of both pure technique and pure emotion. This is a rare combination in any art form, as the technical is often equated with cold, objective detachment, and emotion is equated with sloppiness.
  
  Hitchcock was probably more personally involved with the making of "Vertigo" than any other film, and it shows. Beginning with Madeleine Carroll, Hitch obsessively cast cool blondes as his heroines. Following Carroll were Joan Fontaine, Ingrid Bergman, Marlene Dietrich and Anne Baxter. But it was Grace Kelly whom Hitchcock felt most represented ideal woman. She starred in three of his movies ("Dial 'M' For Murder," "To Catch a Thief" and "Rear Window"). When she married Prince Rainier of Monaco, Hitchcock felt the loss deeply, and tried to recreate Grace in the form of other actresses. He attempted to groom Vera Miles to fill Grace Kelly's shoes (literally, Hitch was a foot fetishist you know), but Miles got pregnant as shooting got underway on "Vertigo". Hitch then brought in Kim Novak from Columbia studios, and found an actress with depth, beauty and empathy far beyond what Grace Kelly ever achieved. It is eerie, watching Jimmy Stewart re-create a love lost, realizing all the while that Hitchcock was attempting to recreate and monumentalize his own unrequited love for Grace Kelly. Strangely, Hitch's molding of Tippi Hedren into Grace's double during the filming of "Marnie" (1964) mirrors Stewart's obsessive attempt to bring Madeleine back from the dead.
  
  The acting is stellar across the board: Jimmy Stewart's fear, depression and cold sweat come across as real, not as some "method" acting technique. You sense that he brought out a lot of his own hidden fears, desires and obsessions in fleshing out Scotty Ferguson. The supporting actors, Barbara Bel Geddes as Stewart's plain, practical girlfriend, Tom Helmore as the suave, manipulative Gavin Elster and Konstantin Shayne as Pop Liebl, the bookstore owner with a knack for oral history, are all perfectly cast.
  
  But what makes "Vertigo" is more than just acting. To have realized this film, Hitchcock's crew was so in-sync with each another that "Vertigo" is experienced as the singular vision of one mind. Samuel Taylor's screenplay, which was worked out in writing sessions with Hitchcock, is intelligent, yet emotional, and the actors' lines resemble poetry more so than everyday conversation. Yet, the lines are delivered naturally.
  
  Saul Bass' iconic whirling abstract titles open up the movie and set its tone. You realize that you are in for a movie unlike any other you've experienced.
  
  Robert Burks was Hitchcock's cinematographer, and on no other film, was Hitchcock's visual sensibility so keenly felt. Burks was a DP at Warner's, and his impeccable craftsmanship can be seen in such non-Hitchcock movies as "The Fountainhead" (dir: King Vidor) and "The Spirit of St. Louis" (dir: Billy Wilder). But, it was his work with Hitchcock that his potential was most realized, and "Vertigo" has got to be the most beautifully filmed movie ever seen. The infinite perspectives, the jarring angles and the surreal lighting attest to Burks' visual genius. Working with editor George Tomassini, who cut this film really tight, and Technicolor advisor Richard Mueller, "Vertigo" shows what is possible in color moviemaking. The scene in which Kim Novak is dropping broken flower petals into San Francisco bay with the Golden Gate Bridge receding in the distance, silhouetted before a cerulean blue sky is reminiscent of a Vermeer painting, and just as skillfully executed. The interiors were designed by Henry Bumstead, and are expressions in simple elegance. Bumstead had to design the bell tower for the Mission scene, and its staircase is a visual expression of the vertigo that haunts Scottie.
  
  Edith Head was Hitch's favorite costume designer, and Kim Novak's severe yet sensuous gray tailored suit is the most beautiful woman's costume I've ever seen in any movie. Much talk is made about how Head won the Oscar for "Sabrina" when Audrey Hepburn was really wearing a Givenchy gown, but Kim Novak's entrance in that gorgeous emerald evening gown always makes every head turn, and makes Hepburn look like a gawky teenager in a rented formal by comparison.
  
  But it is Bernard Herrmann's beautifully Romantic and polytonal score that really completes Hitchcock's artistic vision: It is a haunting and obsessive score, and the ostinato of the swirling strings accentuates the vertiginous feelings Robert Burks' complex camerawork instills in the viewer. In the scene in which Scottie finally has recreated Judy in Madeleine's image, the kissing and caressing that is a prelude to their lovemaking is set to Herrmann's Wagnerian "Scene d'Amour," which runs over five minutes with only a few seconds of dialogue. However, Herrmann's scoring was so integral to the film that the scene never seems like a showcase for the music; instead, one can really understand how Hitchcock was a master of silent film, and how Herrmann composed music that was the perfect counterpart to the action onscreen.
  
  It is really astounding when one considers how all these masterful artists' talents are so seamlessly woven together. "Vertigo" is truly larger-than-life and unrepeatable, despite its numerous imitations....more info
• Alluring Kim Novak drives Stewart to the end.
  For me the most amazing movie. James Stewart follows his obsession with a gripping and credible determination.
  The scenery and photography are fabulous. The twists and turns in the story are spellbinding and reach a dramatic climax.
  Kim Novak for me is the most amazing and alluring actress. Her part in the movie not only is mysterious but it is compelling to see the way she is torn between two competing desires. The one to keep a dreadful secret and the other to love and be loved. Enough to drive James Stewart on to the end.
  She is the kind of woman most men are drawn to instinctively....more info
• Amazing Film!
  This happens to be my favorite Hitchcock film.
  
  The DVD is great. There are interviews and extras galore!
  
  This is considered Hitchcock's most personal film. I think it might have something to do with the fact that almost the entire film is shown solely from Jimmy Stewart's perspective.
  
  Scotty has had an accident and discovers he has vertigo. Almost simultaneously, an old friend calls upon him to follow the Mrs. Apparently she slips into trances that take her back to another time (and into insanity!). But complications arise as Scotty realizes his attraction to her has little to do with the job ...
  
  This is a movie I watch over and over again. The funny thing is, I have talked to many others who have the same obsessive reaction to it as well.
  
  Give it one viewing, and you will be hooked. ...more info
• Hitchcocks masterpiece?
  This is definitely one of my favorite (and one of the strangest) Hitchcock flick's. It's a brilliant movie and almost a love story in many way's, albeit a very cynical one. The story is about a retired detective (James Stewart) who is affraid of heights that is hired by an old freind to spy on his wife(the beautiful Kim Novak) because he think's...get this....she is possessed by an evil spirit. He end's up falling in love with her and I don't want to spoil to much but like most Hitchcock film's there is a twist, or in most cases a couple twist's. Thing's are never as they appear in Hitchcock film's and even if you think you have it all figured out by the end he alway's leaves a piece of the puzzle out to make it impossible and give you that one last jaw-dropping moment. They don't make em like this anymore and to this day nobody can tell a story quite like Hitchcock. I can't recommend this movie enough and encourage any thriller/suspense fans to check it out....more info
• The dark side of romantic love.
  ----Some major spoilers below---
  What I find striking about this film is how it presents such a cynical view of romantic love.
  
  James Stewart (as Scotty) starts out playing one of his every-man/average-guy hero characters, who falls into depression and then into a troubling obsession because of his misplaced romantic love.
  
  Most films seem to glorify romance & love.
  Hitchcock seems to have wanted to point out that though this emotion can be at the center of our lives it is often based upon superficialities.
  
  Many films present love as something that is DESTINE to happen between two people.
  I think that Hitchcock was having fun with this idea, flipping it on its head and twisting it with all sorts of irony.
  e.g. (SPOILERS) The person who Scotty fell so deeply in love with did not really exist, she was simply an 'act' (i.e. It's Judy pretending to be Madeleine, who were two very different types of women).
  Scotty does not appears to be capable of loving Judy for who she really is.
  Scotty becomes morbidly obsessed with Judy's fake version of Madeleine, and later he pressures Judy into looking & acting like her (once again) which she does out of love for him.
  Contrast this with Scotty's best friend (Midge), a fairly attractive woman who adores him. She seems like a woman much more suited to Scotty's taste than Judy is. But he is just too romantically fixated on Judy's 'faux' Madeleine for Midge to have a real shot at him.
  
  This movie is great for a lot of reasons, many of which have already been mentioned here in other reviews, including:
  Novak skillfully playing two very different personalities.
  The view it gives us of San Francisco circa the 1950's.
  The movie's plot goes through very interesting thematic changes (Starting as a supernatural love story/drama then changing mid-stream into a psychological drama heavily laden with irony.).
  It has a wonderful musical score.
  And there is a VERY dark ending to the story (Something almost unheard of in American movies prior to the mid-1960's)
  
  There are some glitches to this film's storyline,
  None of which I feel are too distracting with the possible exception of the somewhat convoluted wife-murder-scheme, which might seem too far-fetched for some people to accept.
  (Perhaps this somewhat bizarre murder scheme was necessary to set up the two-in-one character role played by Kim Novak.)
  If I remember correctly Hitchcock said that he felt that such background details were not that important when trying to get an audience immersed into a story.
  Hey the story works for me! :)
  This is one of my favorite movies....more info
• "Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere."
  John Ferguson (James Stewart) is a retired cop; he's got a severe case of vertigo and remorse after his friend fell off a building to his death in an attempt to save John. Now, he mopes around the house all day with his admiring friend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) in tow, hoping he'll snap out of it. He gets his chance when he is approached by Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), a man concerned about his wife. It seems Madeleine (Kim Novak) has been going into trances and wandering around town. Gavin wants John to follow her around to gauge the severity of the situation and to determine whether she should be institutionalized. John takes the job reluctantly, and begins to fall for Madeleine in the process. She seems to be channelling a doomed ancestor, and John's fondness for her makes him all the more adamant at finding the cause of the problem instead of sending her away. However, things are not as they seem.
  
  This is an interesting role for Stewart, who normally plays a wholesome good ol' boy with a heart of gold. His character here is much more realistic, but since he is the eyes of the viewer, he is still likable. John is an imperfect character, so it is an interesting part to see him play. Stewart's blue eyes photograph really strangely so they create a haunting effect, the way blue eyes looked on the silent screen. Hitchcock most likely used this to his advantage to show the viewer that every character is suspect regardless of how pure they seem.
  
  There are many twists in the plot, as is typical of Hitchcock. Not all of them are welcome twists. The subject begins with a psychological and paranormal context, but ends in realism. This descent from one extreme to the next is somewhat disappointing, but it is certainly an interesting ride....more info
• One of the best movies I have ever seen
  I have recently got into watching Hitchcock movies; this was the fifth I watched and by far the greatest one so far (and one of the greatest of all movies I have ever seen). Jimmy Stewart plays his part even better than in Rear Window, and this was the first time I had seen Kim Novak in a movie - she was wonderful! At first I expected her to be a pretty face and an enticing voice, but she was so much more than that, proving to be a versatile actress, in a demanding role!
  
  The movie kept me hooked throughout - I forgot where I was; nothing mattered but the film. In typical Hitchcock style, the film is thrilling and mysterious, and leaves you changing your mind about the plot every few minutes. He knew exactly how to keep you guessing and keep you enthralled.
  
  See this if you haven't already - they don't make 'em like this anymore!...more info
• the fear factor 50 years later
  With fifty feature-length films to his credit, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) churned out nearly a film a year for the better part of his adult life. 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of Vertigo, a film of dark dreams, obsession of a type that is more like possession, madness, fear, love and guilt. And no small amount of mystery and intrigue until the final minutes. Set in San Francisco, Jimmy Stewart stars as Scotty, a detective who had to retire from the police force because of a traumatic experience with heights. We know what his vertigo begot in the first minutes of the film, but not in the very last scene. Scotty does his college friend Gavin a favor, which is to tail his wife Madeleine who has been "possessed" by the long-dead Carlotta Valdes. That kindness turns out to be a distinctly bad idea. The scenery, the ominous musical score, the now quaint roles of gender and justice, and Hitchcock's genius for mining the depths of the human psyche all make Vertigo well worth watching fifty years on. ...more info
• The master of suspense completely outdoes himself...
  I'm sure many, if not all of you, have seen this movie (it is a widely loved classic) but for the sake of those who have not, I will keep this review as brief and as vague as I can.
  
  `Vertigo' is a masterpiece.
  
  Okay, so I'll say more than that. The thing is, `Vertigo' is one of those movies that the less said about the better. I personally knew nothing of this movie when I saw it. I merely knew that it was supposed to be the best film Alfred Hitchcock ever made. While I am partial to `Psycho' I must admit that `Vertigo' is a much grander achievement and seriously is one of the best films ever made, by anyone. With every twist and turn and shocking revelation, `Vertigo' remains suspenseful throughout, and the end result is beyond satisfying. It's those twists and turns that make it so hard to review or even talk about without giving something vital away.
  
  So, I'll attempt this.
  
  John Ferguson is a former police detective suffering from acrophobia (fear of heights) who is hired by an old friend, Gavin Elster, to follow his wife Madeleine. Gavin feels that Madeleine is possessed by the spirit of a madwoman, and after John watches her closely for a time he begins to think the same way.
  
  Then the unthinkable happens.
  
  I don't want to say anything more, for the second half of the film is just brilliant. All you think you know vanishes before your eyes and when the truth is revealed it will leave you breathless. It's less the actual revelation and more the way in which Hitchcock does the revealing. He is a master of suspense (as we are all already aware) and here he builds the tension masterfully, so when the final scene is upon us we are clenching our seats in anticipation.
  
  A lot has been said about the lack of talent possessed by Kim Novak, but I personally find her performance here to be iconic. Maybe it is solely the character (that twofer she has going here is a whirlwind) but I like to think that she brings a lot of the films mystery with her connection to the role. The role may have only required her to be desirable, but she captures that desire with a hint of ambiguity that really intrigues us. James Stewart is also very, very good here as John. He manages to look and act confused without crossing over into recklessness. He is in complete control all the time. Personally, Barbara Bel Geddes steals the show for me with her small yet powerful portrayal of Midge, John's friend and confidant. She has so much spunk and fresh vitality that one cannot take their eyes off of her. She is a revelation.
  
  The film is lauded as cinematic perfection, and for once I actually agree with the critics of the world. This truly is an iconic film; a masterpiece. I'm sure you've already seen and possibly own this film, but if you haven't I urge you to see it immediately....more info
• Church towers as the golden gate to hell
  This film is one of the best and not only of Hitchcock's films, but of all universal global cinema. What's good about it? Everything. And yet what exactly, if I may ask? First of all it is a beautiful love story. A man who has been disabled by life, or rather by his profession - he was a cop and saw his partner die by falling from a roof when trying to save him - and his developing a severe case of acrophobia, is hired by a friend of his to watch his wife and find out what she is doing in her afternoons when she gets out and does not seem to remember later in the evening what she has done. The man falls in love with the woman who is of course not the wife but a bait that is supposed to make that man witness her suicide, or rather the husband's wife's murder by the husband himself. But that he cannot know. And that love will survive that event, and even his second phase of disability, this time entirely mental since he feels guilty for having been unable to stop the woman when climbing in the tower of the Mission's church because of his acrophobia. And this love survives so well that he falls again when he sees the woman again in the hotel room where he had seen her when she was baiting him into the drama, though now he does not know it is her, he just thinks she looks like her. And she falls again herself in spite of all her attempts at resisting. And the next phase in the drama is going to lock up these two in total bleakness. But there I stop. You have to find out these superb details all by yourself. The second reason that the film is a masterpiece of global cinema is because it is a thriller that is so well sown up and patched up and glued up that even if you know every detail you will enjoy it just the same: it is a thriller that deserves to be watched a hundred times. The haute cinematographic couture of Hitchcock makes every single viewing more enjoyable than the previous one. Even, I think, you may see in the one hundredth viewing elements you had not seen before because the film, each frame of the film, each image of the film, is loaded with myriads of details that are all more significant than the others. And yet it does not look neither baroque nor rococo. It is just perfect and yet so rich that the perfection takes one hundred viewings to be seen. The third reason why this film is a jewel is that Hitchcock plays on height and stairs and staircases and climbing, and descending or ascending, as he so often, or should I say always, does. Here the stairs are coming naturally since we are in San Francisco and the streets are going up and down, and the houses are perched on slanting slopes, and the embankments have stairs to walk into the Bay, and naturally all buildings, churches, hotels, and whatever have stairs in the front and stairs in the back and stairs inside to go up to the upper floors. And the best is of course the staircase going to the top of the church tower in the Mission, and we will go up that winding staircase twice. And we will fly down that staircase twice in exactly the same way. And the whole film will be dominated by the long apparition of the Golden Gate Bridge, that bridge under which all fish bite into the bait that is thrown at them and are fished out of the foaming water into the burning furnace of the hell of a frying pan. The staircase metaphor is powerful in that film, and so natural, that we just wonder if at that moment Hitchcock has not been able to control his own derangement and we can maybe envisage the fact that he is not completely schizophrenic or psychotic, just psychedelic. The last thing I would like to say on that film is that Hitchcock is also a master of rhythm. He must have been a conductor in some other life of his and his temperament is definitely not perfect. He likes rhythmic variations and he can have scenes that seem so slow that they must last hours and some others that go in a wink of an eyelid. But it is neither haphazard nor unjustified nor in any way disturbing or boring. Every single pace, no matter what, is entirely ingrained in the plot and is part of the beauty of the film and our pleasure. We don't even have the freedom to breathe some when the rhythm is going down because then the dramatic tension goes up and vice versa. The denser the slower and the faster the least intense, but then the two together always give the maximum meaningful signification you can imagine.
  
  Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
  ...more info
• Vertigo DVD
  Again, one of the great movies by Director Alfred Hitchcock (my favorite). James Stewart and Kim Novak are together again in this great mystery with a surprising ending. Don't miss Vertigo....more info
• great movie...but no anamorphic?!?!
  I love Vertigo, and there's no reason for me to go on about how great it is, as everyone else has taken care of it. I'm simply here to gripe that this dvd is not anamorphic which is a shame since it is for one of the most stunning looking films. If you have a standard television, it's a non-issue, but HDTV owners may want to steer clear. It's certainly a picky gripe, but as hdtv's grow more and more popular, i'm sure it is something that others will care about. Of course, most HDTv's can zoom and stretch the image so that it fills up the 16x9 frame (same ratio as the film), but it definitely doesn't have the clarity of an anamorphic transfer. ...more info
• "Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere."
  John Ferguson (James Stewart) is a retired cop; he's got a severe case of vertigo and remorse after his friend fell off a building to his death in an attempt to save John. Now, he mopes around the house all day with his admiring friend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) in tow, hoping he'll snap out of it. He gets his chance when he is approached by Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), a man concerned about his wife. It seems Madeleine (Kim Novak) has been going into trances and wandering around town. Gavin wants John to follow her around to gauge the severity of the situation and to determine whether she should be institutionalized. John takes the job reluctantly, and begins to fall for Madeleine in the process. She seems to be channelling a doomed ancestor, and John's fondness for her makes him all the more adamant at finding the cause of the problem instead of sending her away. However, things are not as they seem.
  
  This is an interesting role for Stewart, who normally plays a wholesome good ol' boy with a heart of gold. His character here is much more realistic, but since he is the eyes of the viewer, he is still likable. John is an imperfect character, so it is an interesting part to see him play. Stewart's blue eyes photograph really strangely so they create a haunting effect, the way blue eyes looked on the silent screen. Hitchcock most likely used this to his advantage to show the viewer that every character is suspect regardless of how pure they seem.
  
  There are many twists in the plot, as is typical of Hitchcock. Not all of them are welcome twists. The subject begins with a psychological and paranormal context, but ends in realism. This descent from one extreme to the next is somewhat disappointing, but it is certainly an interesting ride. ...more info