All quotes from Geoffrey O’Brien, NYRB:
"In the body of his work after the war, at least up until 1962, we find his real biography. His biographers—or perhaps they should be called portraitists—were the directors who in different ways brought out previously hidden layers of his personality, revealing Stewart as an actor whose gifts had hardly been tapped."
"But as it progresses, following preliminary phases of youthful playfulness, shy romance, and idealistic determination, all echoing his earlier work, his performance moves into previously unsuspected levels of irritation, rage, despair, and fear that are like the revelation of a new actor."
"The peculiar emotional intensity of Stewart’s acting, his ability to expose raw feeling in a way that seems unmediated, takes on a different significance if seen as the performance of someone for whom acting will always be an act of rebellion against a powerful and demanding father who placed no value on it. The odd mixture of defiance and shame that comes through sometimes might well be the mark of someone torn in opposite ways."
Is there a better film than Vertigo? It screens for six days at Brooklyn Academy of Music, starting Friday.
“Vertigo wouldn’t feel so much like a tragedy if its first half, its fantasy half, weren’t put together with such evident love.” –O’Brien
