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Vertigo (1958)
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TYPE OF FILM: Suspense
STUDIO: Paramount
PRODUCER: Alfred Hitchcock
DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
SCREENWRITERS: Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor
SOURCE: The Living and the Dead (translation of D’Entre Les Morts) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
RUNNING TIME: 128 minutes
PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:
James Stewart…………………………………………………………….John “Scottie” Ferguson
Kim Novak………………………………………………………….Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster
Barbara Bel Geddes…………………………………………………………………..Midge Wood
Tom Helmore…………………………………………………………………….……Gavin Elster
Henry Jones………………………………………………………………………………..….Judge
Konstantine Shayne……………………………………………………………………….Pop Liebl
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DID YOU KNOW?
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Unlike most of the ice blondes whom Hitchcock used in his films and with whom he was always slightly in love, Kim Novak was always held in low regard by the director. He had wanted Vera Miles for the lead in Vertigo, but when she became pregnant with her third child, he was forced to replace her with Novak, which was probably the reason for his instant and apparently baseless dislike. Novak had been promised a fee for being loaned to Warner Brothers by Paramount and refused to work until she received the check. By the time she had been paid, Miles had given birth and was available, but Hitchcock, angry with her for getting pregnant and ruining his plans to make her a star, proceeded with Novak. He did use Miles two years later in Psycho. His great satisfaction, he admitted years later, occurred in the scene in which Madeleine fakes a suicide attempt by jumping into San Francisco Bay. Hitchcock called for multiple retakes, forcing Novak to repeatedly leap, fully clothed and made up, into the studio’s large tank that replicated the bay. As she was pulled, drenched, out of the water, Hitchcock would call for yet another retake, forcing her to be remade up, have her hair done, and change into fresh clothes, only to have to do it again.
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THE STORY
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John “Scottie” Ferguson is chasing a criminal across the rooftops of San Francisco when he is struck by an attack of acrophobia and its resultant vertigo, causing the death of a fellow policeman. He resigns from the police department and is asked by an old friend, Gavin Elster, to follow his wife, Madeleine, who he claims is haunted by the ghost of her mad great grandmother and is likely to commit suicide. She makes an attempt, leaping into San Francisco Bay, and Ferguson saves her, bringing her back to his apartment, undressing her, and putting her in his bed until she recovers. As he sees her more often, he falls in love with her, but she makes another attempt, this time leaping from a church bell tower, and because of his illness, he is unable to save her as he watches her body plummet past him to the ground below.
In pain and guilt-ridden, he has a nervous breakdown, but an old girlfriend, Midge, nurses him back until he encounters Judy Barton—a brunette who bears an uncanny resemblance to his dead love. She swears she has never heard of Madeleine and he pursues her, forcing her to change clothing styles and even her hair color to make her look more like the woman he lost.
He eventually learns that Madeleine was not Elster’s wife, but his mistress and they had meticulously planned the murder of his wife in such a way that Ferguson would swear he had witnessed Madeleine’s suicide. Anxious to learn the entire truth, he forces Judy to the top of the bell tower, where she tells him again of her genuine love for him. Frightened by the approach of a shadowy stranger, she steps back and plunges from the roof, smashed on the pavement—this time dead for real.
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Vertigo, one of Hitchcock’s suspense masterpieces, was based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, The Living and the Dead, which had been translated from the French D’Entre Les Morts. The writers had specifically written this book so that Hitchcock would buy it and film it. They had written several other books with the same plan after they learned that Hitchcock had tired to acquire the rights to their novel Les Diaboliques. Had Hitchcock failed to acquire their book, they reasoned, they would have been able to sell it to a French director with little difficulty after the great success of Les Diaboliques.
Curiously, although Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for five Academy Awards as Best Director and Vertigo is often regarded as his masterpiece, the film received not a single nomination.
Hitchcock alert: In one of his less creative appearances, the director can be seen crossing the street.
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BEST LINE
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Madeleine, on her way to the fatal bell tower, asks John, “Do you believe I love you?” “Yes,” he replies. “Even if you lose me,” she continues, “then you’ll know I loved you and I wanted to go on loving you.”
