Vertigo

Hitchcock’s timeless thriller about a former detective with a fear of heights who is hired to follow a woman who seems possessed by the past.

In Hitchcock’s unflinchingly dark and tragic study of obsession, acrophobic ex-cop Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) compulsively remodels Judy Barton (Kim Novak) in the image of his dead love Madeleine Elster (also Novak).

Though at first the film was criticised for giving away the plot twist halfway through, it has since won classic status as a hallucinatory fable about the instability of desire, and in 2012 became the film to pip Citizen Kane to the top position in Sight and Sound's prestigious Greatest Films poll. Ranked 2nd in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll