VERTIGO: THE MAKING OF A HITCHCOCK CLASSIC

VERTIGO: THE MAKING OF A HITCHCOCK CLASSIC Dan Auiler (St. Martin's, $27.95) Like the protagonist of Hitchcock's flawed yet indelible masterpiece, Auiler is A Man Obsessed. His mission: to unravel the sinuous helix -- a French novel, botched early screenplays, a disgruntled little knot of blonds -- that swirled beneath the director's highly buffed Paramount surfaces. And he does an admirable job, especially considering that this is a rabbit hole down which so many (Donald Spoto, Francois Truffaut, and countless academics) have tumbled before. The storyboards he found are eerie; so, too, is how narrowly the film escaped being called, urp, Face in the Shadow. A- -- Alexandra Jacobs