Notorious, Vertigo, and Rope

I have seen these already, and I'd like to comment on what they all have in common before getting into specific ups and downs.

Beautiful cinematography, of course, with practical use of the quality of the footage. Instead of obscured shapes in natural shadows due to the inability to rely on color, Hitchcock makes use of the audience's knowledge of real-life settings to shape an environment around the characters so that their actions and props aren't lost, but focused upon with subtle placements of cast light. I must stress how important subtlety is to me concerning black and white dramas, since today's audience is no more smarter than last year's, last decade's, or last century's. Being guided along a path, making me think that my discoveries are my own, is the greater experience of suspense thrillers and mystery dramas. I don't mean to say that I despise the blunt and obvious, but there's a great difference between the pronunciations within Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. Which do you think I prefer, and which do you think I feel sick (or incredibly tired) thinking about?
Also, Hitchcock's reliance on brilliant actors, ones who embody their characters so perfectly, I quite literally have forgotten while watching some of these that I was in fact WATCHING a MOVIE. It was an experience more akin to witnessing the events firsthand.

NOTORIOUS:
A spy flick. A romance picture. I find it hard to take a secret intelligence man seriously when he falls in love with his instrument, but Cary Grant's presence brings about a certain charm and attraction that I expect of his characters, which may have thrown me off for the purpose of realism, but prepared me well for the climactic moments. Having seen Saboteur, I know the incredible extent of how sinister asuspenseful moment can get in a Hitchcock, so that may have numbed my senses by the ending, when the tension was intended to be thick enough to swim through, and all I really experienced was a man and a womandescending a case of stairs.

SCRIPT: alright
ACTING: amazing
DIRECTION: amazing
CONTENT: alright

VERTIGO:
I love Jimmy. I love that man, paranoia help me, I love my Jimmy. Right from the start; I see his face, I watch him leap tall buildings, I fall in love with his character. An immediate introduction to the main, his inner conflict, the plot's instigator, and a plot itself. Very quick opening for Hitchcock, much like Lifeboat, but in a different manner.Gets right to the goods, man. Instead of an overuse of expository dialogue or narration, I learn how the characters think and act alone and with each other . I get to know them, instead of letting myself be told like a child. I am allowed to love and hate those characters I choose, and there is no bias for the sake of the plot whether I like or dislike the wrong characters.
What did bother me was the big twist, not itself, but the way it was explained. (I must say, even though I wished for the main character's sake that something like that had happened and that it wasn't his own mind creating delusions, I did not expect my wishes to be granted.) It could all have simply been done with a montage of clips showing Jimmy's perspective and the love interest's perspective of past events simultaneously as the letter was being written, instead of the lengthy flashback narration. That entire moment seems to break away from the flow of the rest of the film. It doesn't take away from the tension, however, which built up to the absolute perfect ending. Those last few frames are the most memorable images from any movie I could possibly imagine. The morning sky. The palebell tower wall. Jimmy Stuart's rigid figure standing in front of a large shadow... it makes my vertebrae twist.

SCRIPT: amazing
ACTING: amazing
DIRECTION: amazing
CONTENT: amazing

ROPE:
I see this movie as a lesser of Hitchcock's movies. It seems to me that most of the people I speak to are so wrapped up in the cinematography that they forget how many times an explanation of characters is provided before each character's appearance, how predictable each character's reactions had turned out to be, howlikable the dastardly murderers are, and that most of the script seems to have been based around disproving a popular elitist theory. I can forgive it though, because the suspense never failed, and the picture was indeed beautiful, having captured entire reels of action with seamless editing. I just can't get over how wise and cold Jimmy's character was throughout a bulk of the film, only to be warmed over by the display of a corpse. That was supposed to be the defining moment, the climactic moment, the moment of truth, and it was really boring and uninteresting.

SCRIPT: alright
ACTING: respectable
DIRECTION: amazing
CONTENT: respectable