You gotta understand: Europeans admire movies for different reasons than we do (witness the Cannes Festival, Michael Moore, and their admiration for Jerry Lewis films). It's about either artsy-fartsiness, or anti-Americanism, or je ne sais quoi. Vertigo is in the first category. It is psychological surrealism. I watch it and enjoy Kim Novak being mysterious and Jimmy Stewart being dumb like a fox. But it isn't my favorite Hitchcock (that would be N X NW), nor my favorite Novak (that would be Pal Joey).
Rear Window is my favorite Hitchcock movie.