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Vertigo (1958)
- Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
- Based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac and written for the screen by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor
*SPOILER FREE
“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock
Vertigo is a mystery romantic psychological-thriller set in San Francisco, CA and follows detective John "Scottie" Ferguson, who has just retired due to his recent development of acrophobia and vertigo (a false sense of rotational movement). Scottie is hired by an old colleague, Gavin, as a private investigator to follow Gavin's beautiful wife Madeleine, who he suspects to be haunted due to her strange behaviors.
This is a tale of obsession and desire, death and fear, it's a love story within a mystery within a love story. Vertigo is the traumatic past that tends to repeat itself in hopes of salvation and relevance.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock takes control over you and all of your senses in his cinematic paradise, charming you from the beginning of the narrative to the end. His craftsmanship of every frame keeps at awe and at the edge of your seat.
James Stewart, Hitchcock's partner in crime, is one of the most charismatic personnel in cinema in its most golden age, and in Vertigo he was no exception. He embodies his character seamlessly and authentically that you almost became him in the narrative, feeling what he's feeling and wanting what he's wanting.
The filmmaking in Vertigo is just mesmerizing, the mind-blowing on-location cinematography and the haunting anesthetics of San Francisco Bay Area, magnificent use of saturated color, seamless composition and editing, and the breathtaking score by Bernard Herrmann. This is top-notch entertainment and pure art.
Besides pioneering different filmmaking techniques at the time, the film was the first to engineer the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey certain effects the character is having to the audience. Until this day this effect is referred to as "the Vertigo effect".
Vertigo is a masterpiece by the master of the visual art of storytelling, a cinematic marvel of sight and sound, and might just be the greatest and most beautiful film in American cinema by America's most legendary filmmaker.
Owning a copy of Vertigo's 6th-anniversary digital 4K restoration is essentially recommended.
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Available to watch on Google Play, Apple TV, and on Amazon Prime Video
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First published on LinkedIn as part of #hamzeh101.