Vertigo (film)

Vertigo
original poster by Saul Bass
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by	Alfred Hitchcock
Written by	Alec Coppel Samuel A. Taylor
Starring	James Stewart Kim Novak Barbara Bel Geddes
Music by	Bernard Herrmann
Cinematography	Robert Burks
Editing by	George Tomasini
Studio	Paramount Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	May 9, 1958 (1958-05-09)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2,479,000
Gross revenue	$7,311,013

Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, based on a novel by Boileau-Narcejac. A retired police detective, who has acrophobia, is hired as a private investigator to follow the wife of an acquaintance to uncover the mystery of her peculiar behavior. The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered much acclaim since then and is now frequently ranked among the greatest films ever made, and often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career.^[1]

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Adaptation 4 Musical score 5 Reception 5.1 Contemporary reception 5.2 Re-evaluation 5.3 Home media 6 Restoration 7 Filming locations 8 See also 9 Notes 10 External links

Plot

Detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) develops acrophobia (the fear of heights) after he witnesses a police officer (Fred Graham) fall to his death during a police chase across the rooftops of San Francisco. After the incident, Scottie decides to retire from police work, but a college acquaintance named Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) hires Scottie as a private investigator to decipher the peculiar behavior of his wife, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak). Scottie follows Madeleine as she visits the grave, the former home and the museum portrait of a dead woman named Carlotta Valdes. Scottie learns that Carlotta Valdes had a tragic life that ended in suicide and that she was Madeleine's great-grandmother. After following Madeleine to Fort Point, Scottie sees Madeleine jump into San Francisco Bay. Scottie rescues her and brings her to his home to recover. Madeleine eventually confesses that she feels like she may be going insane and has to repress suicidal impulses. Scottie comforts and reassures her and the intimacy between them grows.

When Madeleine recounts the details of a bad dream, Scottie identifies the setting as Mission San Juan Bautista and brings her there in an effort to ease her anxiety. At the mission, Madeleine suddenly runs into the church and up the staircase of the bell tower. Scottie chases after her, but his acrophobia prevents him from making it to the top of the staircase. Halted on the steps by vertigo and paralyzing fear, Scottie hears a scream and, through a window, sees Madeleine fall from the tower. The manner of her death was officially declared to be suicide and Gavin blamed it on possession by Carlotta Valdes.

Scottie had fallen in love with Madeleine and is depressed after her death. As his emotional state improves, he begins to haunt the places that Madeleine had visited. On the street, he spots a young woman who, in spite of her very different looks, somehow reminds him of Madeleine. Scottie follows her to her hotel room and tries to persuade her to talk to him. She tells him that her name is Judy Barton and that she is just a simple girl from Kansas. Though initially hostile and defensive, she eventually agrees to join Scottie for dinner - but once Scottie has left, we learn of her true identity. She was, in fact, the woman that he knew as "Madeleine," but she was not actually Gavin's wife. Gavin had bribed her to pose as his wife and pretend to be possessed by Carlotta Valdes. Gavin faked the suicide by hiding at the top of the bell tower and tossing over the body of his already-murdered wife. Gavin used Scottie as a witness to her apparent suicide by correctly predicting that his acrophobia would prevent him from following "Madeleine" to the top of the tower. But Judy had fallen in love with Scottie, so she chooses to hide the truth and attempts to establish a genuine relationship with him.

Scottie grows fond of Judy, but their relationship is hindered by his memory of "Madeleine." He gradually transforms Judy so that she bears an uncanny resemblance to "Madeleine." Scottie's suspicion is aroused when Judy wears a necklace that he remembered seeing in the portrait of Carlotta Valdes. Scottie brings Madeleine to Mission San Juan Bautista, revealing to her upon arrival that he wants to reenact the event in which he failed to save Madeleine, admitting that he has realized she is the same person. Scottie forces Judy up the bell tower while he recounts the incident and presses her for the truth. Scottie realizes that he has conquered his acrophobia and his ascent, therefore, is not impeded by vertigo. On top of the bell tower, Judy admits to the deception, but pleads to Scottie that she loves him. The two embrace, but Judy, startled by an approaching shadow (a nun), steps backwards and falls from the tower to her death.

Cast

• James Stewart as John 'Scottie' Ferguson, a police detective who develops acrophobia after watching a fellow police officer fall to his death.

• Kim Novak as Judy Barton, a girl hired by Gavin Elster.

• Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge Wood, Scottie's confidant and friend.

• Tom Helmore as Gavin Elster, an old college friend of Scottie.

Adaptation

The screenplay is an adaptation of the French novel The Living and the Dead (D'entre les morts) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Hitchcock had previously tried to buy the rights to the same authors' previous novel, Celle qui n'était plus, but he failed, and it was made instead by Henri-Georges Clouzot as Les Diaboliques.^[2] Although François Truffaut once suggested that D'Entre les morts was specifically written for Hitchcock by Boileau and Narcejac,^[3] Narcejac subsequently denied that this was their intention.^[4] However, Hitchcock's interest in their work meant that Paramount Pictures commissioned a synopsis of D'Entre les morts in 1954, before it had even been translated into English.^[5]

Hitchcock originally hired playwright Maxwell Anderson to write a screenplay, but rejected his work, which was entitled Darkling I Listen. The final script was written by Samuel A. Taylor — who was recommended to Hitchcock due to his knowledge of San Francisco —^[5] from notes by Hitchcock. Among Taylor's creations was the character of Midge.^[6] Taylor attempted to take sole credit for the screenplay, but Alec Coppel — the other screenplay writer hired by Hitchcock — protested to the Screen Writers Guild, which determined that both writers were entitled to a credit.^[7]

When actress Vera Miles, who was under personal contract to Hitchcock and had appeared on both his television show and in his film The Wrong Man, couldn't act in Vertigo owing to her pregnancy, the director declined to postpone shooting and cast Kim Novak as the feminine lead. Ironically, by the time Novak had tied up prior film commitments and a vacation promised by Columbia Pictures, the studio that held her contract, Miles had given birth and was available for the film. Hitchcock proceeded with Novak, nevertheless. Columbia head Harry Cohn agreed to lend Novak to Vertigo if Stewart would agree to co-star with Novak in Bell, Book and Candle, a Columbia production released in December 1958.

A coda to the film, a one-minute scene, was shot that showed a more-or-less healed Scottie and Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) listening to a radio report (with unseen San Francisco radio announcer Dave McElhatton giving the report) of Gavin Elster's capture in Europe. This ending was mandated by British censorship requirements (where the murderer could not be allowed to get away with his crime), however, and was not featured in the American cut of the film — it is included as an extra in the restored DVD release.

Musical score

The score was written by Bernard Herrmann. It was not conducted by him, but was recorded in Europe, due to a musician's strike in the U.S.^[8]

In a 2004 special issue by Sight & Sound devoted to Film Music, Martin Scorsese described the qualities of Herrmann's famous score:

"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, fulfilment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for — he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession."^[8]

Reception

Contemporary reception

Vertigo premiered in San Francisco on May 9, 1958 at the Stage Door Theater at Mason and Geary (now the Ruby Skye nightclub). Its performance at the box office was average,^[9] and reviews were mixed. Variety said the film showed Hitchcock's "mastery", but was too long and slow for "what is basically only a psychological murder mystery".^[10] Similarly, the Los Angeles Times admired the scenery, but found the plot "too long" and felt it "bogs down" in "a maze of detail"; scholar Dan Aulier says that this review "sounded the tone that most popular critics would take with the film".^[11] However, the Los Angeles Examiner loved it, admiring the "excitement, action, romance, glamor and [the] crazy, off-beat love story".^[12] As well, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther also gave Vertigo a positive review by explaining that "[the] secret [of the film] is so clever, even though it is devilishly far-fetched."^[13]

Additional reasons for the mixed response initially were that Hitchcock fans were not pleased with his departure from the romantic-thriller territory of earlier films and that the mystery was solved with one-third of the film left to go.^[14]

In an interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock stated that Vertigo was one of his favorite films, with some reservations.^[15] Hitchcock blamed the film's failure on Stewart, at age 50, looking too old to play a convincing love interest for Kim Novak, who at 25 was half his age at the time.^[16]

Hitchcock and Stewart received the San Sebastián International Film Festival awards for Best Director and Best Actor respectively.

In addition, the film was nominated for Academy Awards in two technical categories:^[17]

• Academy Awards (1958)

Nominated: Best Art Direction - Black-and-White or Color (Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead, Samuel M. Comer, Frank McKelvy)

Nominated: Best Sound (George Dutton)

Re-evaluation

In the 1950s, the French Cahiers du cinéma critics began re-evaluating Hitchcock as a serious artist rather than just a populist showman. However, even François Truffaut's important 1962 interviews with Hitchcock (not published in English until 1967) mentions Vertigo only in passing. Dan Aulier has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigo's rise in adulation was the British-Canadian scholar Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films (1968), which calls the film "Hitchcock's masterpiece to date and one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us".^[18] Adding to its mystique was the fact that Vertigo was one of five films owned by Hitchcock which was removed from circulation in 1973. When Vertigo was re-released in theaters in October 1983, and then on home video in October 1984, it achieved an impressive commercial success and laudatory reviews.^[19] Similarly adulatory reviews were written for the October 1996 showing of a restored print in 70mm and DTS sound at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.^[20]

In 1989, Vertigo was recognized as a "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" film by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in the first year of the registry's voting.

The film ranked 4th and 2nd respectively in Sight and Sound's 1992 and 2002 critic polls of the best films ever made.^[21][22] In 2005, Vertigo came in second (to Goodfellas) in British magazine Total Film's book 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.^[23]

In his book Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer, however, British film critic Tom Shone argued that Vertigo's critical re-evaluation has led to excessive praise, and argued for a more measured response. Faulting Sight and Sound for "perennially" putting the film on the list of best-ever films, he wrote that "Hitchcock is a director who delights in getting his plot mechanisms buffed up to a nice humming shine, and so the Sight and Sound team praise the one film of his in which this is not the case – it's all loose ends and lopsided angles, its plumbing out on display for the critic to pick over at his leisure."

They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, a review aggregator of critical opinion, best-of lists, top tens, and critical polls, comprising over 2,000 respondents and dozens of lists, names Vertigo as the second most acclaimed film ever made, behind only Citizen Kane.^[24]

American Film Institute recognition

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #61
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #18
• AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores #12
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions #18
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #9
• AFI's 10 Top 10 #1 Mystery^[25]

Home media

In 1996, director Harrison Engle produced a documentary about the making of Hitchcock's classic, Obsessed with Vertigo. Narrated by Roddy McDowell, the film played on American Movie Classics, and has since been included with DVD versions of Vertigo. Surviving members of the cast and crew participated, along with noted filmmaker Martin Scorsese and Alfred's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock. Engle first visited the Vertigo shooting locations in the summer of 1958, just months after completion of the film.

Restoration

In 1996, the film was given a lengthy and controversial restoration by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz and re-released to theaters. The new print featured restored color and newly created audio, utilizing modern sound effects mixed in DTS digital surround sound. In October 1996, the restored Vertigo premiered at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, exhibited for the first time in DTS and 70mm, a format with a similar frame size to the VistaVision system in which it was originally shot.

One bone of contention regarding the 1996 restoration was the decision to re-record the foley sound effects from scratch (to allow Dolby-quality mixing for surround sound and stereo). Harris and Katz wanted to stay as close as possible to the original: "It was our intent to re-mix the original music tracks with dialogue culled from the old mono and new Foley and effects tracks, which were to have been created following Mr. Hitchcock's original notes. That was the intent. It is not what occurred, the studio having made the decision to re-invent the track anew."^[26] Harris and Katz sometimes added extra sound effects to camouflage defects in the old soundtrack ("hisses, pops, and bangs"); in particular they added extra seagull cries and a foghorn to the scene at Cypress Point.^[27] The new mix has also been accused of putting too much emphasis on the score at the expense of the sound effects.^[28] The 2005 Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection DVD contains the original mono track as an option.

Significant color correction was necessary because of the fading of original negatives. In some cases a new negative was created from the silver separation masters, but in many instances this was impossible because of differential separation shrinkage, and because the 1958 separations were poorly made. Separations used three individual films: one for each of the primary colors. In the case of Vertigo, these had shrunk in different and erratic proportions, making re-alignment impossible. As such, significant amounts of computer assisted coloration were necessary. Although the results are not noticeable on viewing the film, some elements were as many as eight generations away from the original negative.

When such large portions of re-creation become necessary, then the danger of artistic license by the restorers becomes an issue, and the restorers received some criticism for their re-creation of colors that allegedly did not honor the director and cinematographer's intentions. The restoration team argued that they did research on the colors used in the original locations, cars, wardrobe, and skin tones. One breakthrough moment came when the Ford Motor Company supplied a well-preserved green paint sample for a car used in the film. As the use of the color green in the film has artistic importance, matching a shade of green was a stroke of luck for restoration and provided a reference shade from which to work.^[29]

Filming locations

Filmed from September to December 1957, Vertigo is notable for its extensive location footage of the San Francisco Bay Area, with its famous steep hills, expansive views, and tall, arching bridges. Some have noted that in the numerous driving scenes shot in the city, the main characters' cars are almost always pictured heading down the city's steeply inclined streets.^[30] In October 1996, the restored print of Vertigo debuted at the historic Castro Theatre in San Francisco with a live on-stage introduction by surviving cast member Kim Novak, providing the city a chance to celebrate itself.^[31] Visiting the San Francisco film locations has something of a cult following as well as modest tourist appeal. Such a tour is featured in a subsection of Chris Marker's documentary montage Sans Soleil.

Areas that were shot on location (not recreated in a studio):^[32]

• The Mission San Juan Bautista, where Madeleine falls from the tower, is a real place, but the tower had to be matted in with a painting using studio effects; Hitchcock had first visited the mission before the tower was torn down due to dry rot, and was reportedly displeased to find it missing when he returned to film his scenes. The original tower was much smaller and less dramatic than the film's version.
• At Mission Dolores, for many years tourists could see the actual Carlotta Valdes headstone featured in the film (created by the props department). Eventually, the headstone was removed as the mission considered it disrespectful to the dead to house a tourist attraction grave for a fictional person.
• Madeleine jumps into the sea at Fort Point, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
• The gallery where Carlotta's painting appears is the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The Carlotta Valdes portrait was lost after being removed from the gallery, but many of the other paintings in the background of the portrait scenes are still on view.
• Muir Woods National Monument is in fact represented by Big Basin Redwoods State Park; however, the cutaway of the redwood tree showing its age is a replica of one that can still be found at Muir Woods.
• The coastal region where Scottie and Madeleine first kiss is Cypress Point, a well-known location along the 17 Mile Drive near Pebble Beach. However, the lone tree by which they kiss is in fact a prop brought specially to the location.^[33]
• The spectacular domed building past which Scottie and Judy walk is the Palace of Fine Arts.
• Coit Tower appears in many background shots; Hitchcock once said that he included it as a phallic symbol.^[34]
• Gavin and Madeleine's apartment building is "The Brocklebank" at 1000 Mason Street, which still looks essentially the same. It is across the street from the Fairmont Hotel, where Hitchcock usually stayed when he visited and where many of the cast and crew stayed during filming.

• The "McKittrick Hotel" was a privately-owned Victorian mansion from the 1880s at Gough and Eddy Streets. It was torn down in 1959 and is now an athletic practice field for Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory School. The historic St. Paulus Lutheran Church, seen across from the mansion, was destroyed in a fire years later.
• Podesta Baldocchi is the flower shop Madeleine visits as she is being followed by Scottie. The shop's location at the time of filming was 224 Grant Avenue. Using Google Earth's "street view," you can also see the alley location used in the film. The Podesta Baldocchi flower shop now does business from a location at 410 Harriet Street. It is well-known today as the "World's Oldest Family Owned Florist".^[35]
• The sanatorium is 351 Buena Vista East, formerly St. Joseph's Hospital, now Park Hill condominiums. It looks much the same from the outside; the best view is from the Corona Heights neighborhood park.
• The Empire Hotel is a real place, called the York Hotel, and now (as of January 2009) the Hotel Vertigo at 940 Sutter Street. Judy's room was created, but the flashing green neon of the "Hotel Empire" sign outside is based on the actual hotel's sign (it was replaced when the hotel was re-named).
• Ernie's Restaurant (847 Montgomery St.) was a real place in North Beach, not far from Scottie's apartment. It is no longer operating.
• Scottie's apartment (900 Lombard St.) is one block downhill from the "crookedest street in the world". Although the door has been repainted, the entrance is easily recognizable save for a few small changes to the patio. The doorbell and the mailbox, which Madeleine uses to deliver a note to Scottie, are exactly the same as they were in the film.
• One short scene shows Union Square at dawn, with old-fashioned "semaphore" traffic lights. Pop Leibl's bookstore, the Argosy, was not a real location, but one recreated on the Paramount lot in imitation of the real-life Argonaut Book Store, which still exists near Sutter and Jones. One historian said it would have been located in the middle of Union Square if it were a real location, judging by the back projection shots.

See also

• Vertigo effect
• Alfred Hitchcock filmography
• 1958 in film
• Cinema of the United States
• List of American films of 1958
• Films considered the greatest ever

Notes

External links

• Vertigo at the Internet Movie Database
• Vertigo at Allmovie

Restoration

• A Very Different "Slice of Cake:" Restoring Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo
• A Swimming in the Head Detailed critique of the 1996 restoration

Images

• Vertigo: Then & Now Before and after images of San Francisco locations seen in the film
• Vertigo Screenshot Gallery at Alfred Hitchcock Fans Online

Alfred Hitchcock filmography 1920s The Pleasure Garden (1925) · The Mountain Eagle (1926; lost) · The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) · The Ring (1927) · Downhill (1927) · The Farmer's Wife (1928) · Easy Virtue (1928) · Champagne (1928) · The Manxman (1929) · Blackmail (1929) 1930s Juno and the Paycock (1930) · Murder! (1930) · The Skin Game (1931) · Mary (1931) · Rich and Strange (1931) · Number Seventeen (1932) · Waltzes from Vienna (1934) · The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) · The 39 Steps (1935) · Secret Agent (1936) · Sabotage (1936) · Young and Innocent (1937) · The Lady Vanishes (1938) · Jamaica Inn (1939) 1940s Rebecca (1940) · Foreign Correspondent (1940) · Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) · Suspicion (1941) · Saboteur (1942) · Shadow of a Doubt (1943) · Lifeboat (1944) · Spellbound (1945) · Notorious (1946) · The Paradine Case (1947) · Rope (1948) · Under Capricorn (1949) 1950s Stage Fright (1950) · Strangers on a Train (1951) · I Confess (1953) · Dial M for Murder (1954) · Rear Window (1954) · To Catch a Thief (1955) · The Trouble with Harry (1955) · The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) · The Wrong Man (1956) · Vertigo (1958) · North by Northwest (1959) 1960s Psycho (1960) · The Birds (1963) · Marnie (1964) · Torn Curtain (1966) · Topaz (1969) 1970s Frenzy (1972) · Family Plot (1976) Shorts Always Tell Your Wife (1923; uncredited) · Elstree Calling (1930) · An Elastic Affair (1930; lost) · Aventure malgache (1944) · Bon Voyage (1944) · The Fighting Generation (1944; uncredited) · Watchtower Over Tomorrow (1945; uncredited) Lists Unproduced projects · Themes and plot devices · Cameos Related Number 13 (1922; unfinished) · Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65) · Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies (1990) · High Anxiety (1977) · "Hitchcockian"