So who said that great car chases had to be fast? Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest film is a deliberate one, slowly-paced and dreamlike, as befits the story of a former detective hired to follow a woman who may or may not be real. A significant chunk of the film’s first half is devoted to a sequence where the detective, Scotty Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) follows Madeline Elster (Kim Novak) up and down the hills of San Francisco on foot and in his car. The first time you watch Vertigo (and it should be watched more than once), the sequence goes on for so long that it seems almost comical. It’s only afterwards that you realize that the pace, combined with Bernard Herrmann’s all-time great score, has lulled you into some sort of hypnotic state. You’re now willing to buy into anything the movie throws at you. That’s some car chase.