Allow me to get Cavorting's back on this one (on Hitchock, not on Andy dooming cinema). Critical theory and historical importance aren't going to make you like something if you don't. But they're just as legitimate as any other reason for liking something. And really, to the Hitchcock haters here, what kind of explanation would make you actually like him?
I do like Hitchcock quite a bit, though I agree that the pacing is slow and anticlimactic -- basically he was a bridge between the ponderous, melodramatic, old-timey filmmaking of the 40s and the movies of today. What fascinates me about his movies, though, is not their technique, but the total perversion he managed to embed in a mainstream Hollywood movies, using charming and safe leading men to do so. It would be like if The Human Centipede starred Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock (only not quite so shitty, one assumes).
Auntie Christina is probably right about him wanting to fuck his various leading ladies, but evidently he was incapable of doing so. And so, using the camera and the narrative, he renders them all unfuckable for the viewer as well. Isn't Janet Leigh hot? Well here's her incredibly disturbing (for the time) murder. Like checking out the sexy lady across the way? Well, America's everyman is made impotent in the face of her murder. The transformation of Kim Novak in Vertigo is designed to make the viewer feel nauseous and guilty about finding her sexy. Etc.
Again, if you don't like Hitchcock, nothing I can say is likely to change your mind, but that's why I like him.
