Guided by the omnipresent theme of the spiral, Vertigo is one of film history's most splendidly coherent artistic achievements. Hitchcock is in top top form in this brooding suspense of a Pygmalion gone awry. James Stewart, victim of the eponymous condition, plays Scotty, a retired detective hired to follow the troubled Madeline (Kim Novak), the wife of a shipping tycoon who suspects that she is possessed by the spirit of her insane grandmother. Scotty's plunge into madness is irrevocably launched when, following her death, he stumbles upon a shopgirl who resembles Madeline; ruthless in his desire to recreate Madeline, he pursues the shopgirl and, in transforming her, stumbles upon the diabolical plot that had led to his own undoing. Kim Novak, ridiculous eyebrows and all, is amazing as both Madeline and the shopgirl, and Stewart is at the height of his skills balancing the highwire between understated nobility and barking madness. With visual tricks galore and a hypnotizing score by Hitchcock regular Bernard Hermann, Vertigo is a full-force exploration of obsession, desire, and loss – perhaps the best film ever made, it is not to be missed.

Hunter Vaughan (Magdalen FilmSoc Committee)

As ever our Sunday screenings include free wine/juice.