Double Feature Time: Vertigo/Tightrope

Here are two films which I always felt had a bit in common.

For starters, these two films are thrillers in which James Stewart & Clint Eastwood, respsectively, play police detectives who have specific weaknesses which are exploited by the forces they find themselves combating. In Hitchcock's film, Stewart plays Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco detective with a fear of heights who becomes obsessed with the woman (Kim Novak) whom her husband (an old friend) has asked Ferguson to keep an eye on because of fears that she may be suicidal. In Tightrope, Eastwood plays Wes Block, a New Orleans detective with a penchant for getting involved with the prostitutes of the world that he's supposed to be keeping in check, which makes his task of tracking a murderer quite difficult as the victims are prostitutes Block has been involved with. Soon, Block realizes that the killer is also targeting his two daughters, as well as the woman (Geneviève Bujold) who runs a rape prevention center whom Block has befriended. As these two films go on, the two detectives face their respective weaknesses head on, emerging as different people by the end. Both films are quite different from what audiences expected from Hitchcock & Eastwood by this point in their respective careers (I initially thought Tighrope was another entry in the Dirty Harry series when I first saw the poster for it), but both are loved by fans of both legends.