Critic Reviews
100
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
31(97%)
mixed
1(3%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 32 Critic Reviews
100
Vertigo, which is one of the two or three best films Hitchcock ever made, is the most confessional, dealing directly with the themes that controlled his art.
100
All great art has within it some irreducible, inexplicable element, beyond its cleverness and craft. Such is the hold Vertigo has. This strange, frustrating story of a haunted pervert, Hitchcock's Byronic opus, still evades capture, and refuses to be something it's not.
100
Vertigo is one of the great movies about movies, and about Hitchcock’s own way with them.
100
Profound, penetrating and unfathomable rather than (quite) perfectly formed art. Vertigo pioneered that camera effect, known as the dolly zoom, whereby the viewer (the point of view is always Stewart’s) appears to fall into an infinite abyss while remaining quite still...The film itself is that abyss, and we’re still falling into it and for it.
100
Vertigo also combines in an almost unique balance Hitchcock’s brash flair for psychological shocks with his elegant genius for dapper stylishness. Like Psycho, it ends in an “o”, or maybe “oh!” The ancient house adjoining the Bates motel in Psycho certainly has an unearthly similarity to San Francisco’s creepy old McKitterick Hotel in Vertigo. [Rerelease]
100
This dizzyingly intricate film reveals new facets each time you see it. We leave Vertigo unsettled, like Scottie, who ends up on the edge of a precipice. Hitchcock is daring us to leap. He has prepared the ultimate fix for a cinema junkie: a movie to get lost in.
100
Alfred Hitchcock’s rich and strange masterwork.
100
Gripping throughout with frame upon frame of standout images and superb performances from the two leads.
100
An artistic triumph for the master of mystery.
100
The bleakness is perhaps a little hard to swallow, but there's no denying that this is the director at the very peak of his powers, while Novak is a revelation. Slow but totally compelling.
