Hitchcock maps the twisting course of a compulsive love affair to the geography of San Francisco and Northern California, from the chilly waters below the Golden Gate Bridge to a fateful-and fake-bell tower at Mission San Juan Bautista. “A radical meditation on man's (or, more precisely, men's) obsession with illusion, Vertigo reflects back on itself as cinema, and as a sadly ironic view of romantic love in the fifties. James Stewart was never less ‘romantic' than in this film; his urgency is frightening and compelling. Kim Novak knowingly portrays the two faces of woman, icon and victim (with a beautiful turn on the movie standard-she's a smart blonde, a dumb and manipulated brunette). Formally, and in its deeply felt expression of the ultimate love triangle-man, woman, and death-this is Hitchcock's most poetic film” (Judy Bloch).