Volume 43, Number 20 · December 19, 1996
Magnificent Obsession
By Geoffrey O'Brien
Vertigo
by Alfred Hitchcock, restored by Robert A. Harris, by James C. Katz
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is no less strange and singular now than on its original appearance in 1958. Visible for years only in a cramped, splotchy, and faded video transfer, it has now been rereleased in wide-screen proportions, brilliantly restored colors, and almost too brilliantly restored sound (each passing thud and squeak carries almost as much sonic weight as Bernard Herrmann's incomparable score). If Vertigo at first aroused at best muted and scattered appreciation, the response to its reemergence has been apparently enthusiastic consensus that the film is indeed not only Hitchcock's summing up but one of the masterpieces of the last half-century of movies.
Review, 5647 words
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