"vertigo"

Given the reverence for Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece today, people are often surprised to learn that on release, “Vertigo” was a bit of a dud, barely recouping its costs and generating only mixed reviews. This tangled tale of murder and obsession may simply have been too twisted for Eisenhower-era audiences to accept.

They say the customer is always right — but not always right away. For instance, sometimes it takes a while for movie audiences to recognize just how special a film really is. When it premieres, there’s a barely audible thud, and very little box office.  The culprit could be poor distribution, half-hearted promotion, a storyline slightly ahead of its time, the ire of some influential critic with digestive trouble, or any combination of the above. A surprising number of now-classic films either just broke even, or actually lost money on initial release. Here are 10 classics from my list that fall into this category. 

I just got back from San Francisco, a strange, beautiful, bewitching city that has been gradually revealing itself to me since my first visit over forty years ago. As with all great movies, every time I see it I see something new.

It is mystifying but true that when Alfred Hitchcock first visited Hollywood in the late thirties, none of the major studios was willing to offer him a contract — that is, until independent producer David O. Selznick stepped up.

In my childhood, one of the movies that made me fall in love with movies was “North by Northwest” (1959). To my young, dazzled eyes, this film had everything: color, sweep, excitement, suspense, romance, humor, handsome scenery and even handsomer stars. It grabbed me from the first moment and never let me go. It was the most thrilling movie I had seen up to that time.

His name is seldom invoked today, but if you compiled any list of innovators who’d actually changed the shape of movies, it would have to include Saul Bass.

Over the decades, our biggest stars and their agents have been forced to navigate yet another fascinating and frustrating aspect of the movie business: which parts to choose.