Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo remains one of the great films about memory’s dangerous allure. Its spiral-shaped narrative concerns detective Scottie Ferguson, who, haunted by a series of failures, makes an idol of memory and becomes imprisoned by the past. His dark obsession gives birth to one of cinema’s most unsettling love stories: a love affair between a man and the image of the dead woman he is determined to recreate.
—Ryan Holt