Released in 1958, Vertigo is often singled out as Alfred Hitchcock's most important film. The film combined a complex storyline with equally complex cinematography. Vertigo debuted Hitchcock's now famous combination of forward zoom and reverse tracking. His unique zoom and tracking method along with other creative and technical complexities of the film exerted a tremendous influence on an entire generation of filmmakers, especially the French New Wave. Vertigo's presence is felt in films as diverse as Jules et Jim (1961), High Anxiety (1977), Body Double (1984), and Twelve Monkeys (1995). Vertigo was unavailable for decades because its rights, along with those of four other films, were left by Hitchcock as a legacy to his daughter. Vertigo and the other four films were re-released in 1984 to much popular and critical acclaim. Because the films are so popular as well as creatively and technically complex, Hitchcock's films complicate the distinction between high and low...