We’re Picking a Fight Over Hitchcock’s Best
Halloween gives you one evening to turn a friend into an Alfred Hitchcock fan. Which film gets the job? Vertigo arrives with the grandest credentials: first in Sight and Sound’s critics’ poll in 2012, second in 2022. That is quite a reputation to put between a newcomer and the screen.
Our five are ranked by a less intimidating test: how completely does the film get you involved? We want suspense that survives knowing the famous scene, and characters worth worrying about once the immediate danger passes.
The case for our winner
Rear Window wins. James Stewart plays a photographer confined to his apartment with a broken leg. He watches his neighbours across the courtyard and begins to suspect one has murdered his wife. You understand the predicament immediately. More awkwardly, you understand why he keeps looking.
Then Grace Kelly crosses that courtyard. Her Lisa can act while he remains in his chair, and suddenly the comfortable distance between watcher and watched feels enormous. His girlfriend has entered the story he was enjoying from safety. The romance acquires a danger that no argument in his apartment could give it.
He was explaining the film’s construction, not awarding it first place. That verdict is ours. Rear Window keeps its jokes and its desire alive inside the mystery. You can follow every clue without caring how the director arranged it. The discomfort arrives when you notice how much you have enjoyed invading somebody else’s privacy. That matters for a first viewing. A film recommended as a masterpiece can make you feel obliged to admire it. This one invites you to gossip about the neighbours. You are drawn in long before the question of greatness needs to come up.
Start with Rear Window. For a Halloween double bill, follow it with Psycho. Save Vertigo until you have met the director’s more welcoming side. Its idea of romance becomes even more disturbing once you know how charming he can make danger.
