Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Vertigo turns 60 this year. Turner Classic Movies (TCM), along with Fathom Events, is screening Vertigo to honor the film’s 60th anniversary on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 as part of their excellent TCM Big Screen Classics film series.
Here’s the original trailer for the film:
When it was released in 1958, Vertigo was not a success. In fact, critics dismissed it and the film bombed at the box office. According to OpenCulture.com, Hitchcock himself kept the film out of circulation entirely between 1973 and his death in 1980.
It wasn’t until the passing of Alfred Hitchcock that critics and cinephiles began to more seriously take notice (although the film had the strong allegiance of early fans as evidenced in the interview below with director Martin Scorsese).
Now, Vertigo is considered by many to be one of the best films ever made. In 2007, it moved to the #9 spot in the American Film Institute’s (AFI) 10th anniversary edition of its prestigious “100 Years…100 Movies” list. And after a steady, multi-year climb, Vertigo was recognized as the #1 film in 2012 by the British Film Institute (BFI) in their “Greatest Films of All Time” poll, knocking Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane out of its long-held top spot.
British film critic Tim Robey had this to say about both the film’s ascent to the top of the BFI poll and his own opinions about the staying (and growing) power of this Hitchcock classic:
“Even though its rehabilitation as a classic was well under way at the time, I remember my first viewing being something of a disappointment, too. I was hoovering up Hitchcocks from their TV airings in my mid-teens, high on Psycho and Notorious, and found the whole structure of this one broken and bewildering. It didn’t satisfy my early notions of what ‘Hitchcockian’ meant, and the lure of it as romantic fantasy probably didn’t strike much of a chord either. Next to the addictive wickedness of his other thrillers, it was an oddly foreign proposition, arty and stilted-seeming.
“What I hadn’t realised is that Vertigo is the ultimate grower. If its laboriously slow ascent to the highest stratum of critical adoration has proved anything, it is that. In its very bones, the movie is about a repetitive pattern of romantic obsession, and it is entirely fitting that such a pattern makes more sense the more we see it repeated: it’s an experience that gets correspondingly more deep and dreamlike with every viewing, echoing further back into the reaches of the subconscious. There’s something quasi-religious about returning to it, knowing all the mistakes that Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson is going to make all over again, and recognising every facet of Kim Novak, from ethereally seductive to seemingly guileless to manipulative and doomed.”
Vertigo is also available on Blu-ray and your favorite digital download platforms, but don’t miss this opportunity to see the special 60th anniversary screening of this cinema classic on the big screen. Check the Fathom Events website for times and locations and for information about upcoming TCM Big Screen Classics.