The Chinese say that once you've saved a film, you're responsible for it forever.
Vertigo's reputation is not based on its entertainment value but on its value as a fetish object for obsessives.
Its restoration was essential not for maximizing of entertainment but to complete the story: to play out the threatened destruction of the fetish object by obsessives who desire its salvation.
It stands to reason that we less active obsessives must then criticize that obsessive attempt at protection. After all, the original is always better than the restoration: not only the clothes and the hair, but the looks and the manner and the words....
Copyright 1998 Ray Davis