A radical meditation on man'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. (In retrospect the film might be seen as a precursor to the eighties' Blue Velvet with the obscure object of fascination being desire.) 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. As Marilyn Fabe writes, "The hero's simultaneous desire and dread are given brilliant and haunting visual expression through the ambivalent camera movements-especially the combination of forward zooms and reverse tracking shots." (JB)