Vertigo drones on for two-thirds of the movie before Hitchcock switches gears and moves the film to the level it should have been all along.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 23, 2025

Viewed by many at the time as a departure for Alfred Hitchcock, 'Vertigo' can be seen as a return to form ... redolent of spookier works like 'Rebecca' or 'Spellbound,' with a psychoanalytic frame instead of gothic romanticism.

| Jan 8, 2025

It may take a while to work up to its thriller elements, but it 100% earns its right to be called a thriller, and one of the best, most understated, and ingenious of all time at that.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 5, 2024

This remains one of the most painful depictions of romantic fatalism in all of cinema.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 6, 2024

Once it switches over to us getting inside her head... I started seeing it more as Judy's story than Scottie's.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 9, 2024

It's a product of its time (especially when it comes to the treatment of the female characters), and it's not trying to be just a thriller. Rather, it is a story about a doomed romance that turns into a dangerous obsession. Full review in Spanish.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 17, 2023

Novak feels like she was left out to dry by Hitchcock as he spent far more time paying attention to the location of the brooch on her lapel than he spent instructing her on how to convey her character’s emotions.

| Feb 9, 2023

Vertigo is a film with numerous layers that can be discussed in depth and at length. That’s not to say it isn’t also an enjoyable film. Hitchcock knew how to make them. That’s why his films are generally beloved by critics and audiences alike.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 26, 2022

It is a story of obsession and control...

| Sep 13, 2022

Those eccentricities have since become accepted, defended, and loved...

| Sep 7, 2022

The plot is a brilliant box of devilish tricks. And yet the film disappoints. It seems too long, too elaborately designed; the narration of this kind of criminal intrigue sags under such luscious treatment; it needs the touch of the harsh and the squalid.

| Aug 9, 2022

Alfred Hitchcock tops his own fabulous record for suspense with Vertigo, a super-tale of murder, madness and mysticism that stars James Stewart and Kim Novak.

| May 13, 2022

This latest Alfred Hitchcock "thrillorama" offers further evidence of his mastery in mystery and suspense, for, despite its flaws, it grips one's attention from start to finish.

| Mar 24, 2022

A motion picture of incomparable dramatic involvement and hypnotic filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 21, 2022

It's probably the most impeccably put together Hitchcock movie... but ultimately it's men trying to control women, and that doesn't ring very well right now.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2021

Jimmy Stewart is an actor who always delivers, especially in the films he did with Hitchcock. Scottie isn't my favorite character he played but it really is a wonderful performance.

| Mar 24, 2021

Hitchcock is often spoken about regarding his "perfectionism," this way every shot is carefully arranged and the edits hit like a knife. That's no less true here...

| Dec 8, 2020

One of Hitchcock's finest achievements, layering drama, a love story, adventure, and hair-raising suspense into a psychological murder-mystery that simply has no peers.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Aug 23, 2020

If the cinema was [Hitchcock's] church, this film was his confession.

| Aug 13, 2020

[Its] meticulous realism both indicts and empathizes with Scottie's squeezed, linear policeman mentality at odds with other, more profound longings, which depend, in the final analysis, on a radical change in social circumstances.

| Aug 6, 2020