A Fragile Realism

        Hitchcock knew that an excess of confusion can distance, that too many explanations can tire and make us lose the thread, that a prolonged vagueness can jeopardise the credibility of a story. Yet he also knew that if one wants to put aside (or forget for a while) the plausible and go deep into the terrain of the extraordinary and the improbable, ambiguity is necessary to preserve a fragile realism .......

excerpt from

Forever Falling : Vertigo

Miguel Marias

BFI.org.uk

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Vertigo

1958