Random Person

66 years ago today, Vertigo premiered to bewildered audiences. Critics called it “farfetched nonsense” and “Hitchcock-and-bull story.”  It seemed destined for obscurity. But the filmmakers got it. Young Martin Scorsese saw it during its original theatrical run: “Even though the film was not well received at the time… we responded to the film very strongly.”  Years later, Scorsese wrote: “Hitchcock’s film is about obsession, which means it’s about circling back to the same moment, again and again… the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfillment and despair.”  David Fincher declared: “What I love about Vertigo is it’s so perverted. So perverted. It’s a movie direct from Hitchcock’s umbilicus to his unconscious.”  James Gray called it the apotheosis of cinema: “Kim Novak coming out of the bathroom is the single greatest moment in the history of movies.”  When Vertigo screenings became scarce in the 1970s, filmmakers studied it through frame-by-frame blow-ups in Truffaut’s 1966 “Hitchcock/Truffaut” book—an early ancestor to the DVD commentary that helped free Hitchcock from his reputation as a “light entertainer.”  By 2012, Vertigo toppled Citizen Kane from its 50-year reign as the greatest film ever made. 

I don't remember where I found this, but its spot on.