Late-'50s mood piece?
The dreamy, leisurely tone of VERTIGO makes it a kind of portal to its era -- the late-Eisenhower era's self-image, its aspirations, its illusions and delusions.
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You are right, definitely a "time capsule" to the 1950's life style, fashions, moral code, and everything else. San Francisco was a "white, middle class city" back then according to the famous local columnist Herb Caen. It is much different today. Those old cars might look nice, but they had no emission controls at all, and were terrible smog bombs.
RSGRE