Dizzy with disdain

Oh, the joys of being a critic. I'm rather glad I didn't write this - in which two of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest masterpieces, and a classic scene from one of them, are peremptorily dismissed:

The decline of Alfred Hitchcock is no longer news. It is quite clear that the director of The Lady Vanishes and The Thirty-nine Steps is dead and that an obscene ghost is mocking him by superficially imitating him. His last film, Vertigo, was an asinine, unredeemed bore. His latest, North by Northwest, starts more promisingly but soon loses us in cliche and preposterousness... [T]he urgent, encompassing reality of his first films is missing, and without it, his antics simply look foolish.

The scene in the cornfield in which a crop-dusting plane strafes Cary Grant is probably the low point in Hitchcock's career - pure comic-book stuff...

This was written in 1959 by Stanley Kauffmann [PDF]. (Via yesterday's Independent.)