Vertigo (film)

• Release Date: 1958
• Director(s): Alfred Hitchcock
• Writer(s): Alec Coppel; Samuel A. Taylor
• Principal Actors and Roles: Kim Novak (Madeleine Elster; Judy Barton); James Stewart (John 'Scottie' Ferguson); James Stewart (John 'Scottie' Ferguson); Barbara Bel Geddes (Midge Wood); Tom Helmore (Gavin Elster)
• Book / Story Film Based On: The Living and the Dead by Boileau-Narcejac

Vertigo (1958) is a celebrated film by renowned British director Alfred Hitchcock. He created a number of classic movies, including Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). Born in Great Britain in 1899, Hitchcock directed more than 50 films during the course of his storied career. Known as the Master of Suspense, he often worked in the mystery, thriller, and horror genres. Most of his movies are marked by exciting action and heightened suspense. Several of his favorite themes are on display in the psychological thriller Vertigo, including voyeurism and romantic obsession. The film is considered to be one of his more personal, artistic films. The story of Vertigo is based on a French novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac entitled D’entre les Morts (From Among the Dead). The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor.

Plot

The film begins when a police detective named John "Scottie" Ferguson attempts to apprehend a suspect during a rooftop chase. As another officer falls to his death, Scottie discovers he has acrophobia, or vertigo, which is a fear of heights.

After leaving the police force due to this fear, Scottie takes a private detective job for a college acquaintance named Gavin Elster. Elster’s wife Madeleine has been behaving strangely. The man worries she may be suicidal, and he asks Scottie to follow her in secret. Eventually, Scottie and Madeleine fall in love after she jumps into San Francisco Bay and he rescues her. However, due to his vertigo, he later is unable to prevent her from leaping off the bell tower of a Spanish mission. Scottie is devastated by her death.

Some time passes, and Scottie encounters a woman on the street named Judy Barton, who is played by Kim Novak, the same actress who portrayed Madeleine earlier in the film. Judy is Madeleine’s doppelgänger except for certain small differences, such as her hair color and style of dress. Scottie becomes obsessed with Judy and asks her to change aspects of her appearance to more closely resemble his late love.

On the night the transformation is completed, once Judy has come to look exactly like Madeleine, Scottie uncovers the truth. Judy had been hired by Elster as a ruse. She pretended to be his wife to help him fool Scottie and cover up a murder. Scottie takes Judy to the bell tower that had been the site of Madeleine’s faked suicide. He drags her to the rooftop, forcing a confession from her. To carry out the murder, Judy had run to the top of the bell tower, knowing Scottie would be unable to follow due to his fear of heights. As she hid behind a column, Elster threw his wife’s body over the side, emulating a suicide.

When Scottie and Judy reach the rooftop, he finds he is no longer afraid of heights. His vertigo has been cured. Judy hopes they can at last be happy together; however, a noise startles her. She staggers backward and falls to her death. As the film ends, Scottie stands at the ledge, gazing at the spot where Judy fell, seemingly on the verge of committing suicide himself.

The character of Madeleine Elster is an example of an archetype from a number of Hitchcock’s films. She is the classic icy blonde who is desired by the male protagonist, but she is almost unobtainable. Grace Kelly, Hitchcock’s leading lady in Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955), is the epitome of this archetype. Some film critics have compared Scottie’s transformation of Judy to Hitchcock’s own transformations of his actresses, such as Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). In those other movies, Hitchcock likewise turned the actress into his icy blonde ideal. As a result, the protagonist of Vertigo becomes a sort of stand-in for the director himself.

Significance

Vertigo was shot on location in San Francisco, California, and also at Paramount’s back lots in Los Angeles. The contributions of frequent Hitchcock collaborators, such as composer Bernard Hermann and costume designer Edith Head, greatly contributed to the eerie mood and atmosphere of the film. As a result, a number of film critics have lauded their work and have stated that their efforts helped make the film the classic it has become.

Vertigo was the first film to use a special effect known as a dolly zoom, which created the sense of disorientation the protagonist feels whenever his acrophobia is triggered. This technique became known as the Vertigo effect. Hitchcock also relied heavily on color, including deep reds and otherworldly greens, to evoke the protagonist’s emotional state.

As in the majority of his movies, Hitchcock makes a cameo appearance. He plays a man walking across a street carrying a trumpet case. In terms of other aspects of the casting, Vera Miles originally was set to portray the dual role of Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton. However, she became pregnant prior to the start-up of production, and Kim Novak won the part, although there has been speculation that Hitchcock had not settled on Miles and was already considering Novak when he learned of the pregnancy.

Because the film earned more than $2.8 million during its initial box-office run, it broke even. Vertigo received mixed reviews when it was released. However, critical perception of the film changed when it was rereleased in the mid-1980s after it had been pulled from distribution for more than a decade. Over time, Vertigo came to be considered by many critics to be Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece. It has been included in a number of lists of the greatest films of all-time, including several by the American Film Institute.

Vertigo has inspired several other works, such as the film Body Double (1984) by director Brian De Palma and the parody High Anxiety (1977) by comedic director Mel Brooks. The novel The Testament of Judith Barton (2002) by Wendy Powers and Robin McLeod tells the history of the character Judy Barton from Hitchcock’s film.

Hitchcock died in 1980 at the age of eighty, ending a career that spanned over sixty years. Vertigo was filmed during a period that critics consider his creative peak as a director. It remains one of the most remarkable achievements in film history.

Awards and nominations

Nominated

• Academy Award (1958) Best Art Direction (Color)
• Academy Award (1958) Best Sound ()

Bibliography

Auiler, Dan. Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Print.

Barr, Charles. Vertigo. London: British Film Institute, 2002. Print.

Leitch, Thomas, and Leland Poague. A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print.

McDevitt, Jim, and Eric San Juan. A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2009. Print.

Wood, Michael. Alfred Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much (Icons). New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. Print.

Wood, Robin. Hitchcock’s Films Revisited Revised Edition. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. Print.