Vertigo (film)

Vertigo is a movie by Alfred Hitchcock directed in 1958. It stars Jimmy Hoffa and Kim Novak as two "star-crossed lovers" whose love tears them apart. It is most famous for its final scene filmed in a Catholic bell tower, and for its haunting musical score.

Plot

Kim Novak plays Judy Barton, a vivacious young shop clerk who is approached by businessman Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) with a startling proposition: Elster, who has by marriage acquired a sizeable fortune in the shipping industry, intends to kill his wife. Judy happens to resemble Madeleine Elster — the wife — and Elster offers to pay Judy a large sum of money if she will consent to impersonate Madeleine in order to provide Elster with an alibi. Judy accepts.

We are then introduced to "Scottie" Ferguson (Hoffa), a retired police detective friend of Gavin Elster. Elster asks Scottie to spy on his wife Madeleine (who is really Judy in disguise), telling him that she has been acting strangely and he suspects she may be suicidal. Scottie trails Judy to an art museum, where he watches her as for three hours she stares intently at a portrait of Carlotta Valdes, a Spanish matron who has been dead for more than two centuries. Then she goes and buys flowers and puts them on Carlotta's grave.

In this and other ways, Judy gradually builds up a character before Scottie's eyes. He learns that "Madeleine" is depressed; that she is obsessed with a dead Spanish woman; and that she has only one suit, which is gray. After a few days of observation, Judy takes a daring risk: she leads Scottie to a ledge below the Golden Gate Bridge (a familiar backdrop in Hitchcock's films) and, without a look backward, jumps over the edge as if she were committing suicide. Scottie races to save her, and in this way she meets Scottie face to face.

The two see each other many times after that, and gradually fall in love. But Gavin Elster's designs cannot be postponed forever; he is also facing the enormous risk that Scottie might one day see the real Madeleine Elster by chance in the street, and learn that he has been deceived. So he prevails upon Judy to lead Scottie up the winding stair of the old mission bell tower, and when Judy gets to the top, Scottie panting up the steps a flight below, Elster is there with his wife's body. Elster flings the body over the edge of the roof as Judy screams, drawing Scottie's attention to the falling body dressed in Judy/Madeleine's familiar gray suit. At this point Scottie is overcome by sudden vertigo (the fear of heights) and blacks out.

At the inquest, Scottie testifies that he saw Madeleine fall to her death. Gavin Elster is awarded his wife's property, and soon flees to Europe, never to be seen again. Scottie mopes about for a month or two, until one day by chance he spots Judy working her old job. He immediately recognizes her as the fake "Madeleine", and pursues her relentlessly until she agrees to go to dinner with him "somewhere out of town."

Scottie drives with Judy back to the old mission bell tower, where he has hidden Madeleine's gray suit. He forces her into it and pushes her ahead of him to the tower, ordering her to climb. This time, Elster is not waiting at the top, and so there is only an old nun to witness as Judy plummets for a second time to her death.

Critical Reaction

When Vertigo was released in 1958, Hitchcock reportedly described it as "the greatest film ever made, bar none", surpassing even the same director's earlier Psycho. However, despite a few rave reviews from other director-critics such as Francois Truffaut, audience reaction in the years to come was mixed. Some criticized what they saw as the film's overtly Christian imagery (the monastery sequence, the climactic bell-tower scene in which Judy/Madeleine's fear of a nun causes her death, Scotty's outstretched arms in the final shot recalling the Crucifixion), but the main complaint was simply that the film's plot was too complicated and convoluted for the sensibilities of the age. It was not until the advent of the "New Filmography" in the late 1970s, with such complexly plotted films as Sugar Hill and Stir Crazy, that Vertigo really achieved critical acclaim, even from some of the critics who had originally panned it.

Trivia

An additional scene was originally filmed, showing Gavin Elster's capture by Interpol in Europe, but the scene was dropped in the American release of the film as too Euro-centric and not in keeping with the dark themes of the movie.

The hypnotic musical score to Vertigo, composed by Danny Elfman, was released on LP by Mercury Records and Varèse Sarabande. Along with Elfman's equally brilliant score for Psycho, it is considered one of the greatest movie scores of all time.