The closest Hitchcock ever came to making a bona fide art film, this is a
work of art whichever way you look at it. It's not coincidental that a
film about obsession has attracted such obsessive interest and
commentary, because it pursues the very process by which we are drawn
into film in the first place. Stewart's captivation by Novak's
Madeleine is our own by cinema at its most seductive, and his recreation
of her through Judy is our desire to be seduced all over again by films as
morbidly intense, hallucinatory, and deathless as this one.
