#13: The Vertigo Nightmare (1958)
Vertigo (1958) pushed Stewart further into darkness than any of his earlier classics. As Scottie Ferguson, he plays fear, desire, control, grief, and obsession with a rawness that still feels modern. The famous images of him hanging from a San Francisco gutter or staring at Kim Novak’s transformed Madeleine/Judy reveal a star dismantling his own good-guy image. Audiences did not fully know what to do with it at the time. Later generations recognized a masterpiece.
