[discostu]

You need a good script, that sets the maximum level of a movie. A great director can elevate a so-so script to a pretty good movie, but never into a great movie. No level of directing or acting can ever take a movie more than one grade point above the script.

[Borges]

'Vertigo' is a pretty run of the mill script. Sirk films like 'Imitation of Life' and 'Written on the Wind' are frank soap operas on the script level. Sirk's direction is almost a critique of the scripts. Both masterpieces. As for post 70s SS if you think The Indy films, E.T. and Schindler's List (psossibly the best american feature of the 1990s) or even Jurassic Park are 'forgotten' then I don't know what to tell you. Look at the IMDB voting.