Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece is a movie that you don’t just watch but you have to absorb it. Being this the third time watching it I always seem to find something new. There isn’t a dull moment or an unimportant scene in this film. Everything a movie should be is all packed nicely into this film. Vertigo consists of a troubled love story, a character study, a thriller, a surreal dream, a detective story, and most of all, a movie about obsession.
Former San Francisco policeman Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) gets offered a job that he doesn’t want in the first place but eventually accepts it and it turns out to be a job that leads him to an overwhelming state of obsession. An old college friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) offers the job to him. He suspects that his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) is possessed by an old spirit named Carlotta. He wants Scottie (he’s been off duty for awhile now after his accident he had with heights, now has vertigo) to look after her, spy on her and see where she goes all during the day. Scottie is hesitant at first but comes to accept the task.
Amongst the ever so many great scenes in the movie (Kim Novak’s character coming out of the neon green light, the dreamlike sequences), I really found enjoyment when Scottie is spying on Madeleine. It’s here where we see the beautiful city of San Francisco shot gloriously on camera and being set to the haunting sounds of Bernard Herrmann’s, (who also did music for Citizen Kane) powerful score. These scenes play out to only that music and we go about fifteen minutes with no dialogue, just Scottie following Madeleine around town. It plays out like a silent film, despite no dialogue Hitchcock still holds are every bit of attention and interest. She drives around the entire day going in alley entrances to shops to buy flowers, hypnotized by a tombstone in a beautiful cemetery (Carlotta’s grave), studying a portrait of Carlotta inside a museum. Scottie at first can’t seem to place all of her locations together until Gavin tells him that she yearns to find Carlotta and be one with her. Her final stop of the day is under the Golden Gate Bridge where she jumps into the bay. Lucky Scottie was there to pull her out and take her back to his cozy home. Was he lucky, or just being set-up to follow her.
Having taking her in, he becomes to lover her and she the same way. She tells him of this reoccurring dream she has about a small Spanish set-up of a town that includes a church and a farm. Scottie recognizes this and tells her that she needs to face her fears. Only this place becomes her graveyard. She runs up a bell tower and Scottie after her. Vertigo begins to set in for him and can’t get to the top in time to save her from jumping from the top, killing herself.
But it wasn‘t really Madeleine. Gavin has trained her to lure Scottie in so Gavin can kill his “real” wife. He created Madeleine and everything she dons from her makeup and hair down to her dress and shoes . She is a woman who he is having an affair with but after he gets what he wanted, he boots her and heads for Europe by himself. Scottie then sets into massive depression as he thinks the love of his life died.
Madeleine is really Judy (also played by Kim Novak) a girl that Scottie spots on the street and instantly falls for her because she looks like his Madeleine. He molds her into the way he wants her to look and that is the way Madeleine looked. He doesn’t understand that Gavin created Madeleine using Judy as a model. So Scottie is shaping this woman after the woman he desire, the thing is they’re the same person. Changing her hair from brown to blonde, buys her the right clothes, takes her to Ernie’s the best restaurant and also the restaurant where he first laid eyes on Madeleine and changes her make-up. These two people are having their lives ripped from under them because of a person who wanted his own wife killed just so he could leave for Europe.
We sense Scottie’s rage and anger. Stewart can play good and evil equally good. Here, in the second half of the movie, is his evil side coming out. Hitchcock brought out that side. Although Stewart is known for his silly comedies: Philadelphia Story, and also known for being a good guy “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Here we see his dark side. In his four Hitchcock films (Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, and Vertigo) he played the role that he normally wouldn’t play and he played them to perfection.
The camera job is just a clinic. When the camera focuses on Scottie’s vertigo we get the sick feeling that he has. Zooming out while moving the camera away from the focal point. When he is running up the tower he looks down and we get the awful sense. Another is when he is walking up stairs in a hotel. They seem so steep and high and the camera tracks him(he looks so small against them) making his journey up them. Take the scene when Scottie and Judy are kissing and the camera circles around them only to bring back memories of the old farm in the background while they kiss.
Hitchcock takes this story to a different level and the twist ending only rises this movie. It can easily be called Hitchcock’s finest ending.
He had a thing for blonde leading ladies (Kim Novak, Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh, Doris Day and Ingrid Bergman). He made them up because he fantasized about them. He loved them. So Stewart’s character is just like Hitchcock in ways of making up a girl in his own image. Nobody else’s vision mattered only his.