Such a beautiful movie!
I was prepared to sit and watch a very predictable story, as often the case with old movies, but I was in for a real surprise. The movie though was made in the late 50s, but so poignant, so thick in the plot with many unexpected twists.
I loved most the way the cinematography was done. All the scenes in that movie was so perfectly done, that I kept thinking of postcard pictures.
James Stewart was wonderful and charming in his role as an ex detective, John "Scottie" Ferguson, who had left the police workforce because of his problem with height. Kim Novak was intriguing as the wife of Scottie's old friend, who approached him for help out of his concern for his rich wife.
Thought he was doing his friend a favour, Scottie faithfullly followed his old friend's so called wife, tried to keep an eye on her. Successfully saved her from a suicide attempt (drowning), Scottie eventually developed a certain affection for the beautiful woman. Knowing that the woman was also in love with him, he was shocked when she determined to jump to her death from a top of an old church. Numbing with complication from his vertigo problem, Scottie could not do a thing to save the woman he loved so much. He later blamed himself for her death, and thus, had a mental break down soon afterwards.
For months, he was numbed with grief. The moment he was better, what did fate deal him? He was fortunate or unfortunate enought to bump into a young lady, Judy Barton, who bore an uncanny resemblance to his lost love, except for her hair color and the way she dressed up.
Began to think that he was a victim of his old friend's malicious trick, who had conviniently used him and his problem with heights, to remove the rich but unwanted wife, Scottie set out to prove he was right. Fortunately for him, Judy seemed to co-operate in a way.
Very unhappy at what was happening, but so much in love with Scottie, Judy reluctantly tried to please Scottie, to the extent of dying her hair & dressed up in the exact manner of the dead woman, Madeleine Elster.
At the same spot where Madeleine was supposed to be before jumping to her death, Judy broke down, and confessed that she was the same lady who went out with Scottie before, and that Madeleine Elster's husband had planned everything, to frame Scottie for his rich wife's death later.
A sudden appearance of a nun, who came to investigate what all the shoutings were all about, made both Scottie and Judy jumped, startled. Judy stood too closed to the gap, that her lost of balance made her fell out of the rooftop. She was killed instantly at the same spot where Madeleine was pushed before.
At the time this movie was first shown to the public, it was not very welcomed. The result angered Hitchcock, the movie director, that he blamed James Stewart for it. These days, this movie has been hailed as one among the best of all movies produced by Alfred Hitchcock.
Such twist!
