15 Movies That Say More About Their Makers Than They Realise

13. Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock

You could replace the above film with any number of his films in which he subjects a blonde woman to great distress or peril (The Birds, Rear Window, Psycho), but it's in Vertigo that Hitchcock truly opens himself up for all to see - you just might have to delve a little deeper than most to see it. The film follows Scotty (James Stewart), a retired San Francisco policeman now working as a private detective who's hired by a friend to follow his seemingly delusional wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), but ends up falling in love with her. There are plenty more twists in the story than a short summary can really do justice to, but the core themes of obsession and identity resonate more with each viewing. Over the course of Vertigo, Scotty becomes dominated by his desire to get the woman he wants - and if he can't have her, he'll just as happily mould someone else in her image. Hitchcock was notoriously hard on his female stars, and is alleged to have made passes at more than a couple of them before putting them through hell when they didn't give him what he wanted. Scotty can easily be seen as a stand-in for Hitch - a stark reflection of his own obsessive nature - and the trials he puts Madeleine through are an admission of all the times he hurt the women in his life. It's telling, however, that even when every element of the story is under his control, he couldn't even save Madeleine...