Understanding Movies Film Critique # 4
John Cruz
University of Maryland University College
ARTH334/ 5160
August 11, 2013

VERTIGO
I do not whether I like this film or not. I say this because, the film had a dark yet dry feeling to me. I am not saying that the story was not good. Somehow the film’s sound and effects and plot did not really capture my attention. That being said, I thought that the film had many good qualities to make it a great film for this time.
The acting was pretty dry, by that I mean that movements and dialogue were slow at times. My guess is that the director intended to create a feeling of confusion or build a sense of feeling of that of someone with vertigo. The script was good, and it really follows the story it intends to tell, in its dark dramatic ways. It was a drastic way of telling a romantic story, but very much inline with Hitchcock’s The scenes transitions were very fluid, motion, the landscape was complementing to the plot. This film was very diverse in the use of colors, sounds, and especial effects; from the introduction to some of the screenplay action, all of this effect added to the emotion it intended to produce. The locations were suiting to the setting in which the story could be more effective. The actors seemed to be very original or involved into their characters.
The editing of this film must have been very complex, especially when the soundtrack had to be match to the scenes. The scenes in which the director wanted to have a special reaction; such as the dreams and the vertigo effect, seemed simple but for the time it must have been thought as a great creation. The editing of the film showed a lot of improvements from those before it, and it has influenced possibly, many productions since then. Compared to other films of this type I wonder, what did people thought of this kind of dark type of film?