Vertigo (1958) on Netflix
PG19582h 8mMysteryRomanceThriller
John Ferguson, a San Francisco detective, retired after his fear of heights ended his career. An acquaintance hires him to follow his wife, Madeleine, who has taken to wandering the city.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb8.2/10462,964 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
John Ferguson, called Scottie, quits the San Francisco police force after a rooftop chase ends with a colleague falling to his death. The incident leaves him with a fear of heights. His former fiancée, Midge Wood, urges him to rest. Gavin Elster, a college acquaintance, asks Scottie to follow his wife, Madeleine, who has grown distant and roams the city. Scottie trails her to a grave, to a museum where she gazes at a portrait, and to an old hotel. A historian tells him about Carlotta Valdes, Madeleine's great-grandmother, who took her own life. At Fort Point, Madeleine jumps into the bay, and Scottie pulls her out.
Cast
- David Ahdaras Priest (uncredited)
Show all 20 cast
- Raoul Freemanas Diner at Ernie's (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Vertigo (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Madeleine was meant to be Vera Miles, who was under personal contract to Hitchcock and even modeled for an early version of Carlotta's portrait. Delays caused partly by Hitchcock's gallbladder trouble ran into her pregnancy, and rather than wait he replaced her with Kim Novak.
- This was the first film ever to use the dolly zoom, the in-camera trick that stretches perspective to convey Scottie's fear of heights. It worked so well that the shot is still known as the Vertigo effect.
- The plunging view down the bell tower defeated the crew on a full-sized set, so a scale model of the shaft was built and the dolly zoom was filmed horizontally along it rather than pointing downwards.
- The spiralling patterns in the opening titles were generated by animator John Whitney with a Kerrison Predictor, a mechanical computer built during the Second World War to aim anti-aircraft cannons at moving targets.
- The tower Madeleine falls from does not exist. Mission San Juan Bautista had lost its steeple after a fire, so Hitchcock invented a far larger bell tower using scale models, matte paintings and trick photography at Paramount Studios.
- Sight and Sound's critics left the film out of their top ten in 1962 and 1972. It first appeared in 1982, after Hitchcock's death, at seventh, then climbed to fourth, to second, and to first in 2012 ahead of Citizen Kane, before taking second place in 2022.
