Vertigo (1958)

Hitchcock is too impatient to seek out accidental beauty; he constructs beauty. Circumstances change; ideals persist. Hitchcock's pictures age little. For him, beauty and class are not fetishes, but are essential for fluent expression. Beauty is efficient on screen. Dignity is the appropriate surrogate off screen. By revealing the rungs of the social ladder, Hitchcock invites to ascend.

Movies that last preserve that which has no logical structure, that which one remembers well, but cannot evoke on a whim: rich colours, deep shadows, supple movements, unrecognised longings, the plurality of lives and their bearers.

Obsessions animate, nearly consume. Obsessions with people possess nobility, denied to all other obsessions.