The Merits of Hitchcock

Vertigo came out on top of Citizen Kane in Sight and Sound magazine's hit parade of the greatest films of all time. Armond White thinks the de-throning of the classic Kane in favour of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece reflects a cultural desire to be different:

Perhaps Vertigo’s victory frees us from traditional authoritarianism (we should learn to develop our own taste, ignoring fashion) but it ushers in another tyranny. It is the triumph of “smartness” whereas the very nature of Kane’s prodigious exercise of cinema’s potential was actually a celebration–like the 1952 Singin’ in the Rain (which also fell off Sight & Sound’s top ten list). Recognizing the art of cinema as popular pleasure is frowned upon in fashionable criticism. A movie that impacts the culture like Kane always did provides a foundation for wider experience; a film that doesn’t, doesn’t.

James Wolcott agrees:

I won't sign on to Black Dahlia--though I probably need to give it another chance--but I do find Vertigo to be an elaborate sarcophagus that closes in on itself, and agree with Armond White that even among the Hitchcocks Vertigo falls behind "the culturally prescient Psycho," "the numinous The Birds," and, I would add, the microcosmic spectacle and mordant comedy of Rear Window, where Woman prevails.

Strip Vertigo of its haunting, Wagnerian eternal-return score by Bernard Herrmann and you've got a muddled Orphic saga that looks like a not-great Steve Ditko comic with a performance by Kim Novak that exerts all the erotic mystery and allure of a burlap bag.

You may disagree and that's your right, as an American.