Vertigo

(Alfred Hitchcock: Director)

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by Charles Barr

British Film Institute

Due/Published May 2002, 96 pages, paper

ISBN 0851709184

In the 1992 Sight and Sound poll critics and filmmakers voted Vertigo the fourth greatest film of all time. Released in 1958, Hitchcock's masterpiece is a pinnacle of the cinema. Yet in it Hitchcock abandoned his trademark suspense, allowing the central mystery to be solved halfway through. What remained was a study in sexual obsession, as James Stewart's Scottie pursues Madeleine/Judy (Kim Novak) to her death in a remote Californian mission. Novak is ice-cool but vulnerable; Stewart--in the darkest role of his career--genial on the surface but damaged within.

Though it seems to many to be Hitchcock's most personal film, Charles Barr argues that, like Citizen Kane, Vertigo is a triumph not so much of individual authorship as of creative collaboration. Barr documents the crucial role of screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor and by a combination of textual and contextual analysis explores the reasons why Vertigo has come to exert such a continuing fascination both on general audiences and on a wide range of critics and theorists.

Series: BFI Film Classics

Review

Vertigo and its characters are burned into our cultural memory. It is a film that is masterful in its construction of shots and development of narrative and it is also deeply unsettling. Though the movie opened to lukewarm reviews, over the years the film has lent itself to many, frequently divergent, interpretations and many now consider it to be one of Hitchcock’s best. In his concise and sharp description of the film, Charles Barr explores some of the elements that have made Vertigo such an enduring and controversial film. Barr’s analysis illuminates how Hitchcock’s skillful use of camera entices and fools the viewer and draws him/her into the story and Scottie’s (James Stewart) obsession. Without ever becoming too technical, Barr’s study is one of the best explorations of the sophistication of Hitchcock’s techniques. Barr also perceptively analyzes the themes of vision, subjectivity, and obsession that inform Vertigo. Moreover, Barr describes the collaborative nature of the film, detailing the important role of the screen writers (there were three in all), art director, costume designer, editor, and other members of the crew. Well-illustrated, Barr's remarkable analysis of Vertigo, refines and heightens our appreciation of the film and Hitchcock’s craft.