Vertigo Starring Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak,
Hitchcock's Classic Tale of Love, Loss, and Insanity
Jul 12, 2009
In Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart plays Scottie, a recently retired detective spending his days recovering from a near fatal accident on the job. The experience leaves him with vertigo, an overwhelming dizzying effect when he is high off the ground due to acrophobia, the fear of heights.
He is pulled out of this post-career limbo via a meeting with an old college chum, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). He tells Scottie about his wife Madeline’s (Kim Novak) strange behavior; visiting an old church graveyard, going in and out of trances, and generally acting distant and melancholy. He is convinced that his wife is being posessed by an 18th century ghost and needs help to uncover the truth.
Scottie is hesitant until the first time he spies on her from the other side of a resturaunt. He is immediately smitten with her and swooped into a focal journey of romantic desire. Yet, as his investigation twists and turns toward the truth, Scottie’s reality teeters more and more off balance.
Nearly Lost to Time
Many of Hitchcock’s films are noted for their psychological nature that seem to permeate the plots and characters. Vertigo is no different, if a little more subtle. The film has actually little to do with the actual fear of heights, which is used more as a metaphor for Scottie’s inner turmoil.
His inability to venture to great heights mirrors his inability (or emotional refusal) to see the truth, to percieve things from a higher perspective. Actual acrophobia does take center stage in a few key scenes, but they easily could have been changed to accommodate a different kind of condition or anxiety. Hitchcock seems to be more interested in obsession, and its reality distorting effect.
Critics Shrug Off Vertigo in 1958
The film itself has its own troubled path. Released in 1958, it was shrugged off by the critics, and picked up only an average take at the box office; it seemed to be doomed to the halls of mediocrity. Furthermore, it became one of the “Five Lost Hitchcocks”, films whose rights were purchased back by Hitchcock to be given to his daughter.
This left the films (The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry, Rope, and Vertigo) in a state of isolation and disrepair, not to be seen for decades. It wasn’t until 1996 that the films were restored and released again. By that time, however, Vertigo had the distinction of being one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces. It’s eerily fitting that a film with themes of illusion and perception is looked upon differently over time
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