Notable cast/crew: James Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson. This was his fourth and final film with Hitchcock. Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton. Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge Wood. Tom Helmore as Gavin Elster. Henry Jones as Coroner. Raymond Bailey as Scottie's Doctor. Ellen Corby as Manager of McKittrick Hotel. Costume Design by Edith Head. Original Music by Bernard Herrmann.
Running time: 128 minutesDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
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| Spiral descent |
Scottie spends some time recuperating and visits his friend, Midge. Scottie has resigned from the police force. He mentions that an old college friend of theirs, Gavin Elster, has called asking to meet with him. When he meets with Elster, Elster questions him about his vertigo. He then proceeds to ask Scottie if he can look into a problem he's having with his wife. Elster's wife has an obsession with a dead ancestor, and Elster is concerned his wife may even have been possessed by this ancestor. Scottie is reluctant, but after seeing her at a restaurant, he agrees to take the case.
He begins by following her around San Francisco. First, she stops at a flower shop and purchases a bouquet. Then, it's a visit to a cemetery behind a church. The grave she views is of Carlotta Valdes. Next, she visits the Palace of the Legion of Honor, where she sits contemplating a painting of Carlotta. Her bouquet matches the one in the painting, and her hairstyle is the same as Carlotta's, as well. Lastly, he follows her to the McKittrick Hotel where he sees her in an upstairs window. When he asks the desk clerk, she says no one has come in, and when they go to the room, it's empty. The room is rented to Carlotta Valdes.
Scottie talks with a local historian and learns the hotel used to belong to the real Carlotta. Carlotta was brought young to the city by a rich man who built the house for her. They had a child, but afterwards he tossed Carlotta aside. She went mad wandering the streets asking, "Where is my child? Have you seen my child?" She then committed suicide at an early age.
After meeting with Elster where Elster confirms his fear that his wife may think she is Carlotta and try to kill herself, Scottie follows her to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. She jumps in the bay, but Scottie rescues her. He takes her back to his apartment, but she leaves while he's on the phone with Elster. She returns the next day to thank him, and they decide to begin driving around town together. They drive out to a forest where Madeleine talks as if she's Carlotta. She tells him of a place in her dreams that Scottie recognizes as the old mission San Juan Batista.
He takes her there, and they walk the grounds. She remembers things from Carlotta's life, but she then runs for the mission's bell tower. Scottie tries to follow her up the stairs, but his vertigo recurs leaving him helpless. Through a window, he sees her fall to her death, and, shaken, he leaves the scene. The inquest rules it a suicide but is particularly hard on Scottie for not having done what he was hired to do: prevent Madeleine from harming herself. Scottie begins having nightmares of Carlotta and falling, and he is committed to a sanatorium.
After some time, possibly a year, he recovers. He goes back to Madeleine's apartment and sees her car and what appears to be her emerging from the building. It's someone else, though, who has bought the car from Elster. He returns to Ernie's where he first saw Madeleine, and again thinks he sees her only for it to be another woman. He sees a woman who resembles her and follows her home.
Her name is Judy Barton, and while the face is the same almost everything else is different. Scottie speaks with her and asks her to dinner. She agrees after finding out she reminds him of someone who had died. When Scottie leaves, we find out in flashback that Judy was Madeleine. Elster had hired her to play his wife to lead Scottie on. When she ran to the top of the bell tower, Elster was already there and threw his wife off the tower. Scottie had never known the real Madeleine. Judy starts to write a letter confessing to the deception but also to her love for him, but she tears it up instead.
She wants him to love her for herself and not for the false image she portrayed, but it becomes evident as they begin to see each other that he is still haunted by Madeleine. Reluctant at first, she allows him to change her hair, her makeup, her wardrobe to match that image in order to remain with him. The result is his approval and love.
Some time later, they are preparing to go to dinner, and she puts on a necklace that Scottie recognizes as one Madeleine wore that matched the painting of Carlotta. Realization dawns on Scottie, but he doesn't reveal what he has figured out. He takes her down to the old mission where he declares there's, "One final thing I have to do, and then I'll be free of the past." He forces her to go into the bell tower with him, but this time he's able to climb the stairs. He reveals he knows what she did and what Elster did to him. Elster had already broken his wife's neck and tossed her body off the tower. As Scottie and Judy reach the top, Scottie questions why she did this. She's afraid of him but still loves him. As she tells him this, a ghostly form rises behind them. It's a nun come to investigate the voices she heard. Judy recoils in terror thinking it's Madeleine's ghost and falls from the tower. Scottie looks down in horror having lost her again.
MacGuffin: None
Hitchcock cameo: Walking past the shipyard entrance carrying a bugle case
Hitchcock themes:
- Blondes
- Stairs
- Red/green
- Sophisticated villain
- Identity
Verdict: This is not just my favorite Hitchcock movie; this is my favorite movie ever. The first time I saw it, I jumped out of my chair and yelled, "No!" at the end, and even now I get goosebumps at the scene describing Carlotta's life and at the finale. There is an elegiac air that permeates the film, an almost tangible sense of impending loss. The casting of James Stewart has been criticized for him being too old to play the romantic lead, but I find this critique lacking. I don't find it implausible at all that an older, single man would precisely be the perfect target to be set up to fall for a woman in a murder plot. Having a younger woman supposedly fall for him would directly play to his vanity and engender his protectiveness that is then exploited in his weakness that allows them to get away with the murder. Kim Novak is excellent playing two completely different women believably. There are layers to her performance in playing a role within a role, and there is something profound in Judy's mutual obsession with Scottie to the point that she is willing to subsume her own sense of identity in order to remain with him.
The driving question Vertigo presents us is when does love cross over into obsession? Early in the film, it is clear that Scottie loves Madeleine. But what we see later when he has lost her, is an obsession to regain what he had lost. He is still in love with the image of the woman he lost to the point of being willing to remake another woman into her image so that he can convince himself he has regained what was stolen from him. Judy parallels this in her willingness to give up her own identity to gain his love, even if that love is based on an image of another woman so long as she is allowed to play the part of that other woman. There is a profound sense of sadness in two people who are so damaged they are willing to treat and to be treated this way in order to cling to a distorted impression of regaining lost love.
This is one of the Five Lost Hitchcocks. This is the only one of Alfred Hitchcock's films in which the killer is not punished. Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted Vera Miles to play Judy, but she became pregnant and was therefore unavailable.
Roger Ebert found the moment when Judy finally transforms fully into Madeleine's image particularly important. "This shot, in its psychological, artistic and technical complexity, may be the one time in his entire career that Alfred Hitchcock completely revealed himself, in all of his passion and sadness. (Is it a coincidence that the woman is named Madeleine--the word for the French biscuit, which, in Proust, brings childhood memories of loss and longing flooding back?)"
Martin Scorsese considers this Hitchcock's most personal film, and he thinks that is why the film has endured: because of its honesty, truth, and psychological complexity. What he means by this is that what Scottie does to Judy (remaking her in the image of the woman he wants her to be) is exactly what a director does with an actress when he gets a specific performance from her, turning her into the character she's portraying.
The film is noted for its location shots all over San Francisco and for the repeated use of the dolly zoom. The effect is done by zooming in the lens while physically pulling the camera away. Ebert was impressed with the visual style of the film. "He was a great visual stylist in two ways: He used obvious images and surrounded them with a subtle context. Consider the obvious ways he suggests James Stewart's vertigo. An opening shot shows him teetering on a ladder, looking down at a street below. Flashbacks show why he left the police force. A bell tower at a mission terrifies him, and Hitchcock creates a famous shot to show his point of view: Using a model of the inside of the tower, and zooming the lens in while at the same time physically pulling the camera back, Hitchcock shows the walls approaching and receding at the same time; the space has the logic of a nightmare. But then notice less obvious ways that the movie sneaks in the concept of falling, as when Scottie drives down San Francisco's hills, but never up. And note how truly he 'falls' in love."
The use of color also plays prominently in the film. Green and red are used alternately to bring out subtle themes. We see green in Madeleine's stole, her car, the neon lighting outside Judy's apartment, Judy's dress, Scottie's sweater, and the flower boxes in the shop. The green illustrates Scottie's desire and takes on almost a dreamlike quality. The reds (Scottie's door, Midge's sweater, the interior of the restaurant, Madeleine's robe, the flowers, Judy's necklace) are signals of reality, and that something is forbidden. There is even a streetlight that forebodingly changes from green to red.
Graphic designer Saul Bass used spiral motifs in both the title sequence and the movie poster, emphasizing what the documentary Obsessed with Vertigo calls, "Vertigo's psychological vortex".
The score is arguably Bernard Herrmann's best work, and there are few films that incorporate the score into the narrative of the film better. Scorsese described it thus: "Hitchcock's film is about obsession, which means that it's about circling back to the same moment, again and again ... And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfillment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for — he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession."
Out of five bananas, I give it:
The driving question Vertigo presents us is when does love cross over into obsession? Early in the film, it is clear that Scottie loves Madeleine. But what we see later when he has lost her, is an obsession to regain what he had lost. He is still in love with the image of the woman he lost to the point of being willing to remake another woman into her image so that he can convince himself he has regained what was stolen from him. Judy parallels this in her willingness to give up her own identity to gain his love, even if that love is based on an image of another woman so long as she is allowed to play the part of that other woman. There is a profound sense of sadness in two people who are so damaged they are willing to treat and to be treated this way in order to cling to a distorted impression of regaining lost love.
This is one of the Five Lost Hitchcocks. This is the only one of Alfred Hitchcock's films in which the killer is not punished. Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted Vera Miles to play Judy, but she became pregnant and was therefore unavailable.
Roger Ebert found the moment when Judy finally transforms fully into Madeleine's image particularly important. "This shot, in its psychological, artistic and technical complexity, may be the one time in his entire career that Alfred Hitchcock completely revealed himself, in all of his passion and sadness. (Is it a coincidence that the woman is named Madeleine--the word for the French biscuit, which, in Proust, brings childhood memories of loss and longing flooding back?)"
Martin Scorsese considers this Hitchcock's most personal film, and he thinks that is why the film has endured: because of its honesty, truth, and psychological complexity. What he means by this is that what Scottie does to Judy (remaking her in the image of the woman he wants her to be) is exactly what a director does with an actress when he gets a specific performance from her, turning her into the character she's portraying.
The film is noted for its location shots all over San Francisco and for the repeated use of the dolly zoom. The effect is done by zooming in the lens while physically pulling the camera away. Ebert was impressed with the visual style of the film. "He was a great visual stylist in two ways: He used obvious images and surrounded them with a subtle context. Consider the obvious ways he suggests James Stewart's vertigo. An opening shot shows him teetering on a ladder, looking down at a street below. Flashbacks show why he left the police force. A bell tower at a mission terrifies him, and Hitchcock creates a famous shot to show his point of view: Using a model of the inside of the tower, and zooming the lens in while at the same time physically pulling the camera back, Hitchcock shows the walls approaching and receding at the same time; the space has the logic of a nightmare. But then notice less obvious ways that the movie sneaks in the concept of falling, as when Scottie drives down San Francisco's hills, but never up. And note how truly he 'falls' in love."
The use of color also plays prominently in the film. Green and red are used alternately to bring out subtle themes. We see green in Madeleine's stole, her car, the neon lighting outside Judy's apartment, Judy's dress, Scottie's sweater, and the flower boxes in the shop. The green illustrates Scottie's desire and takes on almost a dreamlike quality. The reds (Scottie's door, Midge's sweater, the interior of the restaurant, Madeleine's robe, the flowers, Judy's necklace) are signals of reality, and that something is forbidden. There is even a streetlight that forebodingly changes from green to red.
Graphic designer Saul Bass used spiral motifs in both the title sequence and the movie poster, emphasizing what the documentary Obsessed with Vertigo calls, "Vertigo's psychological vortex".
The score is arguably Bernard Herrmann's best work, and there are few films that incorporate the score into the narrative of the film better. Scorsese described it thus: "Hitchcock's film is about obsession, which means that it's about circling back to the same moment, again and again ... And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfillment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for — he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession."
Out of five bananas, I give it:
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