On Vertigo

 Because of the vertigo I had earlier, we re-watched Hitchcock's Vertigo last night. Of the entire cast, only Kim Novak is still alive.

I wish I could say it held up, but it did not. The sexism was really bad, for one thing. The age gap--James Stewart was 49, Kim Novak 24--bothered me and apparently wasn't well received in the 1950s, either. She's stunning, but what does she see in him? He's not rich, powerful, handsome, fun, or especially sweet. Zero chemistry on screen. At least the husband she's cheating on, also older, is filthy rich.

Whatever does Barbara Bel Geddes, the unrequited love interest, see in him? And puh-lease, don't tell me they went to college together when he looks his actual age and so does she, fourteen years younger. Stewart is a lean, lined almost-fifty and she's a girlish thirty-five.

The older man's assumption that a woman should be willing to change her appearance completely because he wants her to? Hell, no. When he tells her to bleach her hair platinum blonde and change the style, she doesn't want to and his reply is, "Judy, please it can't matter to you..." Dude, it's her head. How about you shave your head. It can't matter to you.

And since she was paid to turn herself into the same person in the past to commit fraud, why the hell does she forget how to move, act, and be more like the person she's imitating on his command--a role she played previously to perfection?

There's much more not to like. Two people swearing love when they haven't had an actual conversation? Nope.

His taking a half-drowned semiconscious woman to his apartment, where he strips her naked and puts her to bed, instead of to a hospital... Ugh. Creepster, especially when you add the age difference. It's not TLC, it's predatory.

And--spoilers okay on a movie from 1958?--why the hell didn't the nuns lock the tower door after the first death from a fall? And why would Judy be so scared of a nun's arrival that she backed away and "died again"?

And finally, Acrophobia would not be as good a movie title, even though that's what Stewart's character has.