![]() However, the purely aesthetic qualities and the immense talents of all those involved only go so far in explaining the depth of the anxiety and tension that virtually never lets up from the credits to the end of Vertigo. Another crucial element contributing to the movie’s angst and disquiet is the genius score of Bernard Hermann, which stands alone as an independent artistic contribution. Novak exudes enough of an air of mystery to compensate for whatever she lacks in technical ability. Stewart is superb, portraying a bland, vaguely self-satisfied Americanness that corsets a cauldron of contradictory emotions. Vertigo is an extraordinarily beautiful film, with images so sharp, crisp and well-delineated they create almost a hyperrealism-particularly evident in the middle of the movie during the partly animated dream (Scottie’s) sequence. ![]() Scottie’s vertigo is cured, leaving him able to stare down the well of the mission tower-his future choked by the cold hand of death. Judy, now having lost her emotional bearings, accidentally falls from the tower. After fanatically and painstakingly transforming the young woman into Madeleine, Scottie discovers the deception perpetrated by Judy and the Machiavellian Elster and forces her up the stairs at the scene of the original crime. It turns out that she is a working class woman named Judy Barton (who, in fact, played the part of Madeleine in Elster’s plot). Soon after he emerges from the sanatorium, more or less returned to full mental health, Scottie notices a woman on the street in downtown San Francisco who reminds him strikingly of the dead Madeleine. Not even Midge, armed with a Mozart recording (“Mozart’s the boy for you.the broom that sweeps the cobwebs away”) can assuage his acute melancholia. The reality, which the spectator learns three-quarters of the way through, is that Elster has hired Scottie because the latter’s vertigo will prevent him climbing a tower from which the husband plans to push his real wife, although Scottie thinks it is the woman he has been following and with whom he has fallen in love that plunges to her death.Īfter Madeleine Elster’s demise, a coroner charges Scottie with negligence, although not legal culpability, and the former detective retreats into a catatonic state, mourning the death of the woman he knew as Madeleine. Inevitably, Scottie falls madly in love with the mystical, mystifying Madeleine. As the ruse continues and deepens, Elster plants the seed in Scottie’s mind that Madeleine is possessed by the ghost of a dead woman, Carlotta Valdes, the mistress of a European man who went insane when he took their child and deserted her, and that she may be suicidal. In fact, it is Elster’s mistress (Novak) posing as his wife whom Scottie is following. Life takes a sharp turn when the wealthy shipbuilder Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) hires Scottie ostensibly to shadow his wife, Madeleine, and uncover the roots of her sudden strange behavior. Recovering from the trauma with the help of loving friend and former fiancée Midge (the wonderful Barbara Bel Geddes), Scottie seems restless, unsatisfied and essentially marking time. His terrible fear of heights and the role it plays in the accidental death of a fellow officer lead him to retire from the force. Stewart plays John “Scottie” Ferguson, a one-time lawyer turned policeman, who once had the aspiration to become San Francisco’s police chief. Vertigo has its apparent flaws, including an implausible murder plot, certain trite or banal elements, and an uneven performance from Novak, but it has endured and proven to be one of the most troubling American films of the postwar period. Its darkness and obsessiveness may have seemed odd to audiences at a time when American affluence and power were supposedly at their height. ![]() The movie was not a box office success, despite being a glamorous, big-budget effort directed by the “master of suspense,” and featuring one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors (James Stewart), along with budding sex symbol Kim Novak. The 1958 classic psychological thriller was based on the 1954 novel D ’ entre les morts ( Among the Dead) by French crime writers Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud (whose pen name was Thomas Narcejac). In celebration of the 60th anniversary of its release, Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo was presented recently in cinemas nationwide in the US by Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies and Universal Pictures.
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