Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Question: why, when brunette Kim Novak II has presumably been paid a tidy sum by the bad guy for impersonating blonde Kim Novak I, does she still hang around in San Francisco, instead of living it up in Copacabana – or the Seychelles? Answer: because then James Stewart wouldn’t see her in the street, and the plot would be without its second half.

Question: why, when it’s obvious that he now hates her, doesn’t Stewart push her off the bell-tower at the end, making it unnecessary for the spooky nun to turn up and provide a fake ending instead? Answer: because then we’d lose all sympathy for Stewart – which Hitchcock doesn’t want us to do, even though there’s only thirty seconds left.

Question: why does Hitchcock just close with the high-angle shot of Stewart staring down, instead of what we want – another of those zoom-in-and-track-out shots taken from above Stewart’s head, showing Novak II dead on the ground? That way we’d know beyond doubt that, with his erotico-maniacal obsession gone, the vertigo which had been a metaphor for it had gone as well. Answer: because they could only do the zoom-in-and-track-out shots with models. To put dead Novak II in the background and living Stewart in the foreground of such a shot would involve double use of a blue screen, one for Novak-plus-model, the other for Novak-plus-Stewart-plus-model. It would have been, in 1958, a mess.

Question: why, when he has sweet-natured, funny, attractive, musical, loving, loyal Barbara bel Geddes to cuddle, does Stewart fall firstly for zombified blonde Novak I, and then for only fractionally less zombified brunette Novak II? Answer: because, like his director, he’s a thorough-going wanker.

No wonder, having made this dreary, humourless concoction, Stewart never worked for Hitchcock again.