Day 75: Vertigo (1958)

Movie #44 – Vertigo (1958) - 128 min, cert PG.

A near death experience on a high rooftop causes Detective John Ferguson (James Stewart) to suffer from acute vertigo whenever he gets more than a few feet off the ground. He retires from the police force on health grounds, but gets approached by an old friend to follow his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), because he believes she is being possessed by the spirit of a dead woman. She has been acting strangely and he is concerned for her safety. Ferguson reluctantly agrees and begins tailing her around town. During one of her ‘possessed’ episodes, she falls into the harbour and Ferguson has to jump in and rescue her. He takes her back to his apartment to dry off and they begin to get to know each other. They begin to fall in love, but before the relationship can develop any further, she has another episode in which she falls to her death from a high tower. Ferguson’s vertigo prevents him from intervening. Some time later, he has a chance encounter with another woman, Judy Barton (Novak again) whose resemblance to Madeleine is uncanny. They start seeing each other but he insists on trying to change her to make her more like the woman he lost, and because she loves him, she allows it. As with most of Hitchcock’s leading ladies, she turns out to be a femme fatale, and Ferguson discovers he has been the victim of a scam all along.

I found this a perfectly enjoyable film, but I think it’s one of those movies, much like Citizen Kane,  that can only be fully appreciated by people with a technical understanding of the art of movie-making. No doubt there are lots of innovative and quite brilliant shots, but by and large I don’t spot all that stuff. Although I did spot the famous shot that Hitchcock used to illustrate Ferguson’s acrophobia, a shot which he pioneered in this movie. It’s the one where the background seems to shoot off into the distance while the foreground stays where it is. It’s done by zooming in while moving the camera backwards, and it’s very effective. Of course, you see it all over the place now.

Score – 7/10. Perfectly enjoyable, but mainly one for the movie buffs.

Next up is Alien which I’ve not seen for many years. The version I’ve got hold of is the Director’s Cut which I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen, so there may well be some footage I don’t recognize.