Vertigo

Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller 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 and based on a novel by Boileau-Narcejac. In the film, a retired police detective who has acrophobia is hired as a private investigator to follow the wife of an acquaintance and 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.

San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) develops a fear of heights after he witnesses a police officer (Fred Graham) fall to his death during a rooftop chase and is unable to assist him. Because of his acrophobia, he experiences vertigo when looking down from heights and explains to his friend Marjorie "Midge" Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes) that he feels compelled to retire from police work.

Scottie is hired as a private investigator by a college acquaintance, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), who wants someone to follow his wife, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) and help him understand and resolve her strange behavior. He tells Scottie that there are times when she does not appear to be herself and she sometimes wanders about the city in a trancelike state.

Scottie begins to follow Madeleine as she spends hours in various activities associated with a dead woman named Carlotta Valdes. Madeleine visits Carlotta's grave, her former home and a painting of her at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Scottie has been told that Carlotta Valdes was Madeleine's great-grandmother and committed suicide long ago. From the portrait, Scottie notices that Madeleine wears the same hairstyle and occasionally carries a similar bouquet of flowers.

One day, he trails Madeleine to Fort Point, San Francisco at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. She walks to the edge and jumps into the San Francisco Bay. Scottie rescues her and brings her to his home to recover. He receives a phone call from Gavin, during which he learns that Madeleine is 26 years old, the same age Carlotta was when she committed suicide.

A day later, Madeleine stops by to thank him. Scottie takes her to see the coastal redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument (filmed at Big Basin Redwoods State Park). Once there, Madeleine enters into a trance and seems to speak from Carlotta's perspective. By the ocean, Madeleine confesses to Scottie her fear that she is going mad. She falls into Scottie's arms and he promises to protect her.

The next morning, Madeleine recounts the details of her dream. Scottie correctly identifies the location as the Mission at San Juan Bautista and takes her there to show her it's not a dream but real. Madeleine suddenly runs into the church and up a steep staircase to the bell tower. Scottie chases after her, but his acrophobia prevents him from making it to the top. Frozen on the steps by vertigo and paralyzing fear, Scottie hears a scream and, through a window, he sees Madeleine plummet to her death.

At the inquest, Scottie is acquitted of criminal charges but is devastated by feelings of guilt. Gavin absolves him and blames the link to Carlotta Valdes, saying, "You and I both know who really killed Madeleine." Gavin intends to cope with his grief by leaving San Francisco and traveling far away. Scottie has nightmares and becomes depressed. He is placed in a mental hospital, where he descends into a silent, catatonia passivity. Midge makes futile attempts to console him as she realizes that Scottie had fallen in love with Madeleine.

Kim Novak as Judy

Weeks later, released from the hospital, a brooding Scottie begins to haunt the places where he had followed Madeleine. One day he sees a young woman who bears a striking resemblance to her, although this woman wears much more colorful clothing and makeup and has darker hair.

Scottie goes to her hotel room, where she reluctantly tells him her story, she is Judy Barton, a department store salesgirl from Salina, Kansas, now making a life for herself in San Francisco after a series of bad relationships. She shows him family photographs and a driver's license as further proof.

Scottie invites her to dinner and she hesitantly agrees. He gives her an hour to get ready and then the truth is revealed. Judy starts to pack a suitcase, and to explain everything to Scottie by leaving behind a letter. She confesses in it that she was, in fact, the woman that he knew as "Madeleine," but was not really Gavin's wife. Gavin had bribed her to pose as his wife and pretend to be mentally unstable and possessed by Carlotta Valdes.

Gavin had faked the suicide by hiding at the top of the bell tower and tossing over the body of his already-murdered wife. Gavin then used Scottie to corroborate claims of his wife's unstable behavior and to be the perfect witness to her apparent suicide by correctly assuming that Scottie's fear of heights would prevent him from following "Madeleine" to the top of the tower.

Judy feels guilty now for the pain she has caused Scottie. She takes a chance and decides to stay, destroy the letter and join him for dinner.

Scottie is attracted to her, but their romance is engulfed by his obsession with Madeleine. He gradually persuades Judy to dress more and more as Madeleine, even shopping for her clothes to find an identical suit. After dying her hair blonde, the transformation is almost complete. Scottie asks for the same hairstyle Madeleine wore. She emerges as the mirror image of Madeleine, which causes Scottie to fall in love with her all over again.

Some time later, while preparing to go out to dinner, Scottie casually notices a necklace that Judy decides to wear. He realizes to his horror that it is the same one Carlotta Valdes wore in her portrait, one that Gavin's wife must have inherited.

Instead of going to the restaurant, a grimly determined Scottie takes her on a long drive back to Mission San Juan Bautista, the scene of the crime. There he reveals that he has seen through Judy's ruse. He intends to re-enact the moment that he failed to save Madeleine's life. He forces Judy up the bell tower while he recounts the incident and presses her for the truth. While struggling with Judy on the way up, Scottie conquers his acrophobia and, with no vertigo to stop him like before, he makes it to the top.

In the bell tower, Judy confesses to the deception. But she pleads to Scottie that she loves him. They embrace, but Judy, suddenly frightened by the shadow of an approaching nun, steps backwards and falls from the tower to her death.

Adaptation

The screenplay is an adaptation of the French novel Sueurs froides: d'entre les morts ("Cold Sweat: From Among the Dead") 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.

Although François Truffaut once suggested that D'Entre les morts was specifically written for Hitchcock by Boileau and Narcejac, Narcejac subsequently denied that this was their intention. 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.

Hitchcock originally hired playwright Maxwell Anderson to write a screenplay, but rejected his work, which was entitled Darkling I Listen. (Hitchcock scholar Dan Aulier calls Anderson's screenplay a "standard B detective picture".) The final script was written by Samuel A. Taylor — who was recommended to Hitchcock due to his knowledge of San Francisco from notes by Hitchcock. Among Taylor's creations was the character of Midge. Taylor attempted to take sole credit for the screenplay, but Alec Coppel[who?] protested to the Screen Writers Guild, which determined that both writers were entitled to a credit.

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.

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, however, and was not featured in the American cut of the film — it is included as an extra in the restored DVD release.

Editor