Vertigo

Vertigo (1958) is Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller you can watch online on iFILM, with James Stewart in the lead. Retired San Francisco detective Scottie Ferguson quits the force after a rooftop chase leaves a colleague dead and leaves him crippled by a paralyzing fear of heights.

A college acquaintance hires Scottie to shadow his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), who drifts through the city as if possessed by a woman who killed herself generations ago. The surveillance curdles into obsession. Scottie falls for the woman he is paid to follow, loses her, then meets a stranger who looks unnervingly like her. From there Hitchcock flips the story open, handing the audience a secret Scottie has yet to grasp.

The script grew out of a French novel by Boileau and Narcejac. Cinematographer Robert Burks and composer Bernard Herrmann built the now-famous dolly-zoom effect and a spiraling score that film schools still pick apart. Dismissed on release, it later topped poll after poll as one of the greatest movies ever made. Stream Vertigo (1958) online on iFILM.