Vertigo (film)
Re-evaluation

Over time the film has been re-evaluated by film critics and has moved higher in esteem in most critics' opinions. Every ten years since 1952, the British Film Institute magazine Sight and Sound has asked the world's leading film critics to compile a list of the ten greatest films of all time. In the 1962 and 1972 polls, Vertigo was not among the top 10 films in voting; only in 1982, after Hitchcock's death, did Vertigo enter the list, in seventh place. By 1992 it had advanced to fourth place, by 2002 to second, and in 2012 to first place in both the crime genre and overall, ahead of previous first-place entry Citizen Kane; in the 2022 poll, it took second place behind Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. In the 2012 Sight & Sound director's poll of the greatest films ever made Vertigo was ranked seventh; In the 2002 and 2022 editions of the directors' list the film ranked sixth.

Commenting upon the 2012 results, the magazine's editor Nick James said that Vertigo was "the ultimate critics' film. It is a dream-like film about people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and each other to fit a kind of cinema ideal of the ideal soul-mate." In recent years, critics have noted that the casting of Stewart as a character who becomes disturbed and obsessive ultimately enhances the film's unconventionality and suspense, since Stewart had previously been known for warmhearted roles.

In 1998, Time Out conducted a poll in which Vertigo was voted the fifth greatest film of all time. The Village Voice ranked Vertigo at No. 3 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. Entertainment Weekly voted it the 19th Greatest film of all time in 1999. In January 2002, the film was voted at No. 96 on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics. In 2009, the film was ranked at No. 10 on Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo ' s Top 10 Non-Japanese Films of All Time list. In 2022, Time Out magazine ranked the film at No.15 on their list of "The 100 best thriller films of all time".

Already in the 1960s, Cahiers du Cinéma critics had begun re-evaluating Hitchcock as a serious artist. The film ranked eighth on Cahiers du Cinéma ' s Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1959. However, even François Truffaut 's 1962 book of interviews with Hitchcock devotes only a few pages to Vertigo. Dan Auiler has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigo ' s re-evaluation was the 1968 publication of British-Canadian scholar Robin Wood 's book Hitchcock's Films, which called it "Hitchcock's masterpiece to date and one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us".

Adding to its mystique was the fact that Vertigo was one of five Hitchcock-owned films removed from circulation in 1973. When Vertigo was re-released in theaters in October 1983, and then on home video in October 1984, it achieved commercial success and laudatory reviews. The October 1996 showing of a restored print on 70 mm film with DTS sound at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco was met with a similarly strong reception. In his 1996 review of the film, critic Roger Ebert gave it four stars out of four and included it in his list of The Great Movies.

A minority of critics have expressed dissenting opinions. In his 2004 book Blockbuster, British film critic Tom Shone suggested that Vertigo ' s critical re-evaluation has led to excessive praise: "Hitchcock is a director who delights in getting his plot mechanisms buffed up to a nice humming shine, and so the Sight and Sound team praise the one film of his in which this is not the case – it's all loose ends and lopsided angles, its plumbing out on display for the critic to pick over at his leisure."

In 1989, Vertigo was recognized as a "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" film by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in the first year of the registry's voting.

In 2005, Vertigo was ranked at number two in Total Film magazine's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, behind only Goodfellas. In 2008, an Empire poll of readers, actors, and critics named it the 40th greatest movie ever made. The film was voted at No. 8 on the 2008 list of "100 Greatest Films" by Cahiers du Cinéma. In 2010, The Guardian ranked it as the third-best crime film of all time. Vertigo ranked third on the BBC 's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 87 reviews, with an average rating of 8.90/10. The website's critics consensus reads deems it "an unpredictable scary thriller that doubles as a mournful meditation on love, loss, and human comfort". As of February 2024, Vertigo is one of only fourteen films with a perfect score on Metacritic (two other Hitchcock films, Notorious and Rear Window, are also on the list).

The most recent edition of the American Film Institute 's top 100 films of all time, released in 2007, placed Vertigo at number nine, up 52 positions from its placement at number 61 in the original 1998 list.

American Film Institute recognition

The San Francisco locations have become celebrated amongst the film's fans, with organized tours across the area. In March 1997, the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles published a special issue about Vertigo's locations in San Francisco, Dans le décor.

Director Martin Scorsese has listed Vertigo as one of his favorite films of all time.

The renewed public appreciation for Vertigo is accompanied by a growing body of academic scholarship. Conferences like the Annual International Vertigo conference, for instance, showcase this trend, as evidenced by its 2018 event at Trinity College Dublin.
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