CURIOUSLY, the best movie about the incel (involuntarily celibate) phenomenon is sixty years old– Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic, Vertigo. The lead character, Scottie Ferguson, played by James Stewart, is obsessed with the wife (Kim Novak) of industrialist Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). I don’t want to give away a complex plot. I’ll just say that Gavin is the successful alpha male juggling women, while Scottie is a troubled loner on the outside, searching for unattainable perfection which he can never have.

Director Alfred Hitchcock himself was something of an incel, though married– continually crushing on impossibly unreachable actresses like Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren. Living vicariously through his films– Vertigo revealing much.