Vertigo

Most film critics, when discussing the film Vertigo, seem to want to talk as much about Hitchcock's obsessions as those possessed by the central characters of his films. Which is, of course, interesting. But it's a critical study of Hitchcock rather than a look at the film on its own, without meanings that come from outside the story of the film. So Vertigo is used to expose Hitchcock's psychological defects as much as the central character's.
Without Hitchcock imposing his own personality on Vertigo is it possible to view the film as a story of a man obsessed with a woman so that he is tricked into believing she is dead when, actually, another woman is murdered? Of course it is. And I think the film is better for it. There is an innocence about Scotty, played brilliantly by James Stewart, that is lost when he becomes the replacement for the director. Gradually the innocence is replaced by anger until the man is deranged almost to the point of wanting to commit murder himself. The portrait is extremely subtle: first he tries to help an old college mate, reluctantly, to follow the man's wife who, the man tells him, believes she has been "taken over" by the soul of a dead woman, a dead woman who took her own life; he tells Scotty that he is afraid his wife is near suicidal herself. Scotty follows the woman, played in her own lusciously cool way by Kim Novak, and gradually falls in love with her. When he believes she has committed suicide and cannot help her because of his vertigo, he has a nervous breakdown. Can he recover from  this? He discovers a woman who looks exactly like the woman he loved and attempts to shape her to look like the woman he believes to be dead. But she is not dead. This woman he is shaping to his deranged will is the very same one he had previously followed and loved. When he finds out he has been all along deceived his derangement takes the form of madness: he wants the woman to pay for tricking him. Which leads to a fascinating and thrilling finale in which Scotty is a lost, mad soul who has now found the way to resolve the problem he had previously found left him unable to prevent a suicide - which, of course, never took place.
Brilliant. Slow moving but worth watching its every scene, every twitch of Stewart's face, every twist in the very intricate plot.
Recently it's been voted best film ever made by Sight and Sound magazine. I think I prefer Rear Window but it is better than most others not directed by The Master.