VertigoWhat is the price of obsession, and what is the true nature of "possession"? In Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, retired detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) is tasked with following Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), wife of an old college acquaintance who believes she has been possessed by an ancestral spirit. Scottie's mission gradually becomes more and more personal as he become attracted to the elusive--even icy--blonde with a penchant for trances. His feelings root deeply within him, and after a tragic event, they even warp and wend his heart into pursuing his fantasies beyond the pale as he garners the affections of a substitute, a girl named Judy Barton.
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Much has been said about Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo, and with good reason. Vertigo is a rich story--the taut screenplay penned by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor--is packed with convincing characters, and the plot is so layered that it becomes a psychological labyrinth, a joy to navigate. And after so many repeat viewings, so many lines resurface and boldly underscore the core themes that dominate the film. Take phrases employed by men to describe the San Francisco of old, frequently referencing "the power" and "the freedom"; those words reflect upon the class and gender disparity of the San Francisco of the 19th Century, memories of the past, and consider the ways that these phrases are spoken by whom and when. This leads into the premise of a supernatural "ghost" story, as well as the legend of Carlotta Valdes, the spirit Madeleine's husband, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), claims to be in possession of Madeleine from time to time. Those words resurface at the climax of the film, when Scottie--his detective skills finally resurfacing--pieces together the clues to this intricate puzzle, evoking those same words first heard by Gavin and later a historian he consulted as he unearthed the history of Carlotta. The film is conscious of its own brand of necromantic power, a haunting in more ways than one. Characters occupy spectral groves of redwoods and the preserved locales of history gone by. It is within these vestigial echoes of the past that Scottie and Madeleine wander following their inevitable introduction, forced to confront that which awaits at the end of the dark corridors of the mind, the phantoms that spiral and swirl around them, drawing them ever deeper, a descent into their respective underworlds. It is no coincidence that the literary source for Vertigo--D'entre les morts--translates as "from among the dead".
Vertigo is set in San Francisco, and there is no mistaking that watching the film, as the movie is virtually a travelogue of scenic locales and beautiful vistas. One has merely to see the shot of the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point where Madeleine visits to want to plan a vacation there right away--but maybe not for a swim. The backdrops are also important for establishing the city (and surrounding places) as a realm of the living and of the dead. Places like the California Palace of the Legion of Honor is an art museum, a storehouse of relics--portals to the past--the true headstones of artists. Perhaps most profoundly, the Mission San Juan Bautista is a preserved recreation of the 19th Century church from the age when Carlotta Valdes was still alive. Vertigo alters time and space through revolutionary cinematic techniques and deft direction, such as the signature "trombone shot"--seen when Scottie suffers a bout of his vertigo--achieved by simultaneously zooming out and tracking in. And like with his vertigo, Scottie gradually loses his footing on his own world, and is eventually transformed into a wraith of his former self, struggling to break free of the mystery he has become too deeply entrenched in. The theme of transformation rings a different bell for Madeleine, as the porcelain-like features and ultra-composed countenance unravels over time, and she remains acutely aware of the devil's work in altering another to fit a prescribed mold of perfection. Like the myth of Pygmalion, Madeleine is molded, a model of what she should be--and with it comes the claustrophobia of being denied even yourself, your identity mutable. As if Madeleine's curse wasn't tragic enough, as the film unfurls like the petals of Carlotta's bouquet, we watch Scottie inflict the same smothering form of transmutation on Judy, as he becomes consumed--possessed himself--by the very same evil which had performed these same actions on Madeleine before him.
Now, I must interject here, because so much of the intricacies and details of Vertigo I wish to discuss would spoil the surprises and undercut a first-time viewer's experience. So, for those who have yet to see Vertigo, please come back to finish.
At its heart, Vertigo is a movie about perception--and with perception comes that which we see, and what we believe we see: illusion. Illusion is a lie, a deception by nature, and deception is the main conflict in the film. And the deception begins with Scottie's visit to Gavin...probably far earlier than that by my guess. Gavin is the mastermind of not just his own wife's murder, but inevitably the destruction of many other lives; not so much because he seeks to harm anyone but his wife, but because he doesn't care. He is a man possessed by himself and is, like others, haunted by the past. But for Gavin, he seeks to procure the "power" and "freedom" of the days long past, where a man could take what he wanted from a woman and throw her way. It is this selfishness that sets the seed of evil in him, and allows this plot to thrive. Pay close attention to Gavin's pitch to Scottie when he lures him into coming out of retirement to follow his wife--his timing, his performance, his diction. He talks about how he came back to San Francisco to take over the shipping business he has no love for, and he's already fed up with it. Perhaps its been that long since he hatched this scheme...perhaps even longer than that. Gavin is likely a man who seized opportunity through unscrupulous means, and was not very memorable in college, as Scottie's former fiance and college alumni, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) attests. One wonders just how much time Scottie spends with Midge; we see them enjoying each other's company, and there is the sense that there was once romance there, one grown into friendship and not the other way around. Frequent stolen glances at Midge imply that she would prefer it the other way, but Scottie doesn't seem to give it a second though, and her awkward attempt to close that gap with her replica of the "Portrait of Carlotta" only serve to do the opposite. The "Portrait of Carlotta" is a key totem in Vertigo, as it represents how one person can make an image of another, an artificial representation, a mimicry. It is art, and deception has an artfulness to it. Just as Judy had been made to look like (the real) Madeleine, and then take on the "role" of Carlotta when possessed by her, Scottie is also remade into a rendition of himself, worked over like a canvas, becoming a caricature of himself after his nervous breakdown. And of course Midge is literally an artist, using her deception--however benign--to try to charm Scottie by painting her face over Carlotta's.
Both Scottie and Judy have a taste for double identities. For Scottie, it is as simple as the fact that he has a nickname; for Judy, however, it is far more complex and integral to the plot; she is playing a role, as though she were on stage, a spectacle. I love her line near the end of the film, after Scottie has completely transformed Judy back into the persona of Madeleine, deferring his kiss, claiming "she has her face on"; "persona" is derived from Latin for "mask"...in other words, a "false face". The title sequence of Vertigo begins with a close--invasive, even--and scrutinizing close-up of a woman who we can presume to be Madeleine/Judy. Coincidentally, the music here is the same as what is played when Judy is remade at Scottie's behest to have her hair died back for her encore performance as the ephemeral blonde. But Judy walks back into the lion's den willingly, if somewhat apprehensively; but I attribute this anxiety to be not as much as a fear of being caught as something a bit more like "stage fright". There is something about the moments that follow when Scottie "saves" Madeleine from the bay and she faints which always seemed strange to me. If she were truly in a state of shock, the fainting would make sense; but she is pretending, thus her "fainting" is likely pretend, too. Now this carries some more interesting--even somewhat salacious--notes, since Scottie's necessary disrobing and drying her body was done not to an unconscious woman, but one pretending (and thus cognizant) of the experience. This reading enhances the other sexual overtones which follow in Scottie's apartment later, and also give a fetishistic foundation for the doomed lovers and their eventual affair--Scottie may be a "voyeur", but Judy likes to be watched. This is reinforced by her decision not to flee when Scottie approaches her some time later, and she has abandoned her role as Madeleine for Judy. She doesn't run like her better senses tell her to do; rather, she allows him to control her and put her into his spotlight, craving the attention he brings her. She is visibly disappointed when Scottie's eyes wander on their first date, and his apparent ambivalence as they dance and walk in the park does little to light her fire. I suspect that deep down in her subconscious--be it guilt, a need for attention, or both--she wants Scottie to know the truth, in part because she has grown pained by playing the illusion of Madeleine again, but also because she wants him to understand her in a deeper way; why else would she really wear Carlotta's brooch again? Judy doesn't strike me as a dumb person, but someone who has an addiction to affection, a heart too hungry for acceptance. And just as Scottie is undone by his obsessions, so is Judy, as they are sucked under in their mutual gyre, spinning in a vortex not unlike the shapes scene within the eye of Madeleine in the beginning.
Vertigo is a mystery, a detective story where the tropes of the genres are often subverted: the "hero" loses the girl, the killer gets away, the climactic rooftop chase happens in the prologue, and the big reveal for the audience happens for the audience far before it does for the protagonist. And though much of the mystery gets revealed to Scottie in the end, if there's one scene in Vertigo which has long baffled me, it is the scene when Scottie follows Madeleine into the McKittrick Hotel, only to be greeted by a daffy owner who claims "Miss Valdes" hasn't been there today. And sure enough, when they go up to check the room, she is gone as is her car. What could the possible intention be for such a puzzling scene? It's pretty unlikely Scottie's imagining things, and less likely that the old woman is in on Gavin and Judy's conspiracy. Some have claimed that it is a kind of supernatural moment, where time has less of a hold on reality in this "portal to the past", and when Scottie walks in, it is not at the same time as when Madeleine did, hence she wasn't there. Possible, but given the altogether absence of the supernatural in actuality here, I don't agree. My thought has been that perhaps Gavin Elster has been at this process for a little while, and may have recruited more than one woman to rent a room at the hotel; the woman who the owner recognizes as Carlotta Valdes is not Judy, thus she hadn't been there, but Judy would have a key to said room, which could allow for her to enter and create the sense of befuddlement in Scottie, setting him off balance just enough to become more engaged in the idea of a supernatural event occurring. Judy knows she's being watched, and this affords her an opportunity to get away to correspond with Gavin without Scottie knowing what's happening. Complex? Sure, but so is a plot to convince a retired detective with vertigo to follow his possessed wife around San Francisco, only later to not make it up the crucial staircase in the tower at San Juan Bautista.
Many shots in Vertigo are framed in such a way that when the same composition appears later in the film--for example, the shot of the church interiors after Madeleine has entered them, or the exterior shots of Ernie's--it creates a sense of déjà vu, or having the sense that an experience had taken place before, a central theme of Vertigo, as everything winds back on itself. It is interesting that two different towers are of import in Vertigo: Coit Tower and the fabricated tower at San Juan Bautista. As Vertigo is ostensibly a story concerning itself with the supernatural, it is not that far to infer the occult associations with the card from Tarot decks, aptly called "The Tower", which represents destructive--often violent--upheaval and change. This is not unlike Madeleine's unfortunate end (both of them), and the resulting traumas which Scottie is forced to suffer. Lines of dialogue get repeated frequently, evoking memories in others as well as the audience, such as when a distraught Judy is offered brandy by Scottie, just as he offered a distraught Madeleine before, in both instances saying to "drink this down like medicine". In the same scene, Scottie tells Judy--after he has indicated she should dye it blonde--that "it can't matter that much to you"; although not previously uttered, there is the sense by the look on Judy's face that Gavin had spoken those same words to her before all of this. This scene also illuminates that Hitchcock is up to his devious self in Vertigo, as our sympathies have been turned from Scottie toward Judy, who by now we know was Madeleine. She is turned back into the object of his affection by the obsessed, even tyrannical Scottie, our hero turned oppressor. We want to mourn Judy, save that deep down, we are burdened with the dramatic irony that she is an accomplice to murder, and like the two of them, our hearts and minds cannot consolidate this discrepancy of emotion. And the most bitter refrain of their tragic love song is uttered frequently by both Madeleine and Scottie: "too late", the coda for their unfortunate romance.
There are large spans of time in Vertigo where there is little to no dialogue; certainly when Scottie is tailing Madeleine, and especially following her death midway through the film, where observation and perception speak more than words could about Scottie and his character--his role as a perpetual observer. The most tragic thing about Scottie is that he is always consigned to the role of a voyeur, a witness, unable to intervene in any meaningful way, forced to see what he finds he cannot alter, or what he is led to believe he has any power over or freedom to control. For Scottie, seeing is everything, a quality which has benefited him in his prior profession, and is knowingly exploited by Gavin's machinations. Scottie's obsession with Madeleine begins as soon as he spots her in her stunning evening dress at Ernie's. It is at this moment--when the music by long-time contributor of Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, swells--that he is smitten, hypnotized, and compelled, just as the ghost of Carlotta supposedly has a grip on Madeleine. It may be his natural good nature which prompts him to dive into the bay to save her from drowning, but after taking her back to her car, he calls out to her as "Madeleine", not "Mrs. Elster", because he already knows her well enough to call her by that name, even though they are still, technically, strangers. Both Judy and Scottie end up having both their passions soured as a result of the collateral damage of Gavin's murderous scheme. (Even Midge has her "first love" of painting ruined as a result, having chosen poorly for her subject matter.) Judy, for whom it could be presumed that she enjoyed being watched and looked at with affection, is now forced into becoming an object for gratification; worse yet, for a man whom she loved deeply, and to whom she cannot reveal her true self. And for Scottie, for all his powers of observation and deduction, he is forced to acknowledge his own ineptitude at his profession, since as the callous magistrate following Madeleine's death observes, he has the unfortunate history of "doing nothing"...just watching things fall down around him, just as he did in the first few minutes of the film. Someone I knew had a theory about Scottie's ultimate fate after Judy falls out of the tower and he loses Madeleine for the second time. Consider the dream sequence where Scottie sees his silhouette fall out of the tower onto the roof of the church of San Juan Bautista. The pose is virtually the same as the one Scottie adopts at the end, one of limp defeat and resignation to his failure, as he is poised upon the edge of the literal and figurative abyss.
Recommended for: Any fan of a psychological tale of thrilling suspense, pathos, and even romance. Vertigo is a landmark film with a story that haunts. And I cannot recommend this movie enough--it is, without question, my all-time favorite film.
Vertigo is set in San Francisco, and there is no mistaking that watching the film, as the movie is virtually a travelogue of scenic locales and beautiful vistas. One has merely to see the shot of the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point where Madeleine visits to want to plan a vacation there right away--but maybe not for a swim. The backdrops are also important for establishing the city (and surrounding places) as a realm of the living and of the dead. Places like the California Palace of the Legion of Honor is an art museum, a storehouse of relics--portals to the past--the true headstones of artists. Perhaps most profoundly, the Mission San Juan Bautista is a preserved recreation of the 19th Century church from the age when Carlotta Valdes was still alive. Vertigo alters time and space through revolutionary cinematic techniques and deft direction, such as the signature "trombone shot"--seen when Scottie suffers a bout of his vertigo--achieved by simultaneously zooming out and tracking in. And like with his vertigo, Scottie gradually loses his footing on his own world, and is eventually transformed into a wraith of his former self, struggling to break free of the mystery he has become too deeply entrenched in. The theme of transformation rings a different bell for Madeleine, as the porcelain-like features and ultra-composed countenance unravels over time, and she remains acutely aware of the devil's work in altering another to fit a prescribed mold of perfection. Like the myth of Pygmalion, Madeleine is molded, a model of what she should be--and with it comes the claustrophobia of being denied even yourself, your identity mutable. As if Madeleine's curse wasn't tragic enough, as the film unfurls like the petals of Carlotta's bouquet, we watch Scottie inflict the same smothering form of transmutation on Judy, as he becomes consumed--possessed himself--by the very same evil which had performed these same actions on Madeleine before him.
Now, I must interject here, because so much of the intricacies and details of Vertigo I wish to discuss would spoil the surprises and undercut a first-time viewer's experience. So, for those who have yet to see Vertigo, please come back to finish.
At its heart, Vertigo is a movie about perception--and with perception comes that which we see, and what we believe we see: illusion. Illusion is a lie, a deception by nature, and deception is the main conflict in the film. And the deception begins with Scottie's visit to Gavin...probably far earlier than that by my guess. Gavin is the mastermind of not just his own wife's murder, but inevitably the destruction of many other lives; not so much because he seeks to harm anyone but his wife, but because he doesn't care. He is a man possessed by himself and is, like others, haunted by the past. But for Gavin, he seeks to procure the "power" and "freedom" of the days long past, where a man could take what he wanted from a woman and throw her way. It is this selfishness that sets the seed of evil in him, and allows this plot to thrive. Pay close attention to Gavin's pitch to Scottie when he lures him into coming out of retirement to follow his wife--his timing, his performance, his diction. He talks about how he came back to San Francisco to take over the shipping business he has no love for, and he's already fed up with it. Perhaps its been that long since he hatched this scheme...perhaps even longer than that. Gavin is likely a man who seized opportunity through unscrupulous means, and was not very memorable in college, as Scottie's former fiance and college alumni, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) attests. One wonders just how much time Scottie spends with Midge; we see them enjoying each other's company, and there is the sense that there was once romance there, one grown into friendship and not the other way around. Frequent stolen glances at Midge imply that she would prefer it the other way, but Scottie doesn't seem to give it a second though, and her awkward attempt to close that gap with her replica of the "Portrait of Carlotta" only serve to do the opposite. The "Portrait of Carlotta" is a key totem in Vertigo, as it represents how one person can make an image of another, an artificial representation, a mimicry. It is art, and deception has an artfulness to it. Just as Judy had been made to look like (the real) Madeleine, and then take on the "role" of Carlotta when possessed by her, Scottie is also remade into a rendition of himself, worked over like a canvas, becoming a caricature of himself after his nervous breakdown. And of course Midge is literally an artist, using her deception--however benign--to try to charm Scottie by painting her face over Carlotta's.
Both Scottie and Judy have a taste for double identities. For Scottie, it is as simple as the fact that he has a nickname; for Judy, however, it is far more complex and integral to the plot; she is playing a role, as though she were on stage, a spectacle. I love her line near the end of the film, after Scottie has completely transformed Judy back into the persona of Madeleine, deferring his kiss, claiming "she has her face on"; "persona" is derived from Latin for "mask"...in other words, a "false face". The title sequence of Vertigo begins with a close--invasive, even--and scrutinizing close-up of a woman who we can presume to be Madeleine/Judy. Coincidentally, the music here is the same as what is played when Judy is remade at Scottie's behest to have her hair died back for her encore performance as the ephemeral blonde. But Judy walks back into the lion's den willingly, if somewhat apprehensively; but I attribute this anxiety to be not as much as a fear of being caught as something a bit more like "stage fright". There is something about the moments that follow when Scottie "saves" Madeleine from the bay and she faints which always seemed strange to me. If she were truly in a state of shock, the fainting would make sense; but she is pretending, thus her "fainting" is likely pretend, too. Now this carries some more interesting--even somewhat salacious--notes, since Scottie's necessary disrobing and drying her body was done not to an unconscious woman, but one pretending (and thus cognizant) of the experience. This reading enhances the other sexual overtones which follow in Scottie's apartment later, and also give a fetishistic foundation for the doomed lovers and their eventual affair--Scottie may be a "voyeur", but Judy likes to be watched. This is reinforced by her decision not to flee when Scottie approaches her some time later, and she has abandoned her role as Madeleine for Judy. She doesn't run like her better senses tell her to do; rather, she allows him to control her and put her into his spotlight, craving the attention he brings her. She is visibly disappointed when Scottie's eyes wander on their first date, and his apparent ambivalence as they dance and walk in the park does little to light her fire. I suspect that deep down in her subconscious--be it guilt, a need for attention, or both--she wants Scottie to know the truth, in part because she has grown pained by playing the illusion of Madeleine again, but also because she wants him to understand her in a deeper way; why else would she really wear Carlotta's brooch again? Judy doesn't strike me as a dumb person, but someone who has an addiction to affection, a heart too hungry for acceptance. And just as Scottie is undone by his obsessions, so is Judy, as they are sucked under in their mutual gyre, spinning in a vortex not unlike the shapes scene within the eye of Madeleine in the beginning.
Vertigo is a mystery, a detective story where the tropes of the genres are often subverted: the "hero" loses the girl, the killer gets away, the climactic rooftop chase happens in the prologue, and the big reveal for the audience happens for the audience far before it does for the protagonist. And though much of the mystery gets revealed to Scottie in the end, if there's one scene in Vertigo which has long baffled me, it is the scene when Scottie follows Madeleine into the McKittrick Hotel, only to be greeted by a daffy owner who claims "Miss Valdes" hasn't been there today. And sure enough, when they go up to check the room, she is gone as is her car. What could the possible intention be for such a puzzling scene? It's pretty unlikely Scottie's imagining things, and less likely that the old woman is in on Gavin and Judy's conspiracy. Some have claimed that it is a kind of supernatural moment, where time has less of a hold on reality in this "portal to the past", and when Scottie walks in, it is not at the same time as when Madeleine did, hence she wasn't there. Possible, but given the altogether absence of the supernatural in actuality here, I don't agree. My thought has been that perhaps Gavin Elster has been at this process for a little while, and may have recruited more than one woman to rent a room at the hotel; the woman who the owner recognizes as Carlotta Valdes is not Judy, thus she hadn't been there, but Judy would have a key to said room, which could allow for her to enter and create the sense of befuddlement in Scottie, setting him off balance just enough to become more engaged in the idea of a supernatural event occurring. Judy knows she's being watched, and this affords her an opportunity to get away to correspond with Gavin without Scottie knowing what's happening. Complex? Sure, but so is a plot to convince a retired detective with vertigo to follow his possessed wife around San Francisco, only later to not make it up the crucial staircase in the tower at San Juan Bautista.
Many shots in Vertigo are framed in such a way that when the same composition appears later in the film--for example, the shot of the church interiors after Madeleine has entered them, or the exterior shots of Ernie's--it creates a sense of déjà vu, or having the sense that an experience had taken place before, a central theme of Vertigo, as everything winds back on itself. It is interesting that two different towers are of import in Vertigo: Coit Tower and the fabricated tower at San Juan Bautista. As Vertigo is ostensibly a story concerning itself with the supernatural, it is not that far to infer the occult associations with the card from Tarot decks, aptly called "The Tower", which represents destructive--often violent--upheaval and change. This is not unlike Madeleine's unfortunate end (both of them), and the resulting traumas which Scottie is forced to suffer. Lines of dialogue get repeated frequently, evoking memories in others as well as the audience, such as when a distraught Judy is offered brandy by Scottie, just as he offered a distraught Madeleine before, in both instances saying to "drink this down like medicine". In the same scene, Scottie tells Judy--after he has indicated she should dye it blonde--that "it can't matter that much to you"; although not previously uttered, there is the sense by the look on Judy's face that Gavin had spoken those same words to her before all of this. This scene also illuminates that Hitchcock is up to his devious self in Vertigo, as our sympathies have been turned from Scottie toward Judy, who by now we know was Madeleine. She is turned back into the object of his affection by the obsessed, even tyrannical Scottie, our hero turned oppressor. We want to mourn Judy, save that deep down, we are burdened with the dramatic irony that she is an accomplice to murder, and like the two of them, our hearts and minds cannot consolidate this discrepancy of emotion. And the most bitter refrain of their tragic love song is uttered frequently by both Madeleine and Scottie: "too late", the coda for their unfortunate romance.
There are large spans of time in Vertigo where there is little to no dialogue; certainly when Scottie is tailing Madeleine, and especially following her death midway through the film, where observation and perception speak more than words could about Scottie and his character--his role as a perpetual observer. The most tragic thing about Scottie is that he is always consigned to the role of a voyeur, a witness, unable to intervene in any meaningful way, forced to see what he finds he cannot alter, or what he is led to believe he has any power over or freedom to control. For Scottie, seeing is everything, a quality which has benefited him in his prior profession, and is knowingly exploited by Gavin's machinations. Scottie's obsession with Madeleine begins as soon as he spots her in her stunning evening dress at Ernie's. It is at this moment--when the music by long-time contributor of Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, swells--that he is smitten, hypnotized, and compelled, just as the ghost of Carlotta supposedly has a grip on Madeleine. It may be his natural good nature which prompts him to dive into the bay to save her from drowning, but after taking her back to her car, he calls out to her as "Madeleine", not "Mrs. Elster", because he already knows her well enough to call her by that name, even though they are still, technically, strangers. Both Judy and Scottie end up having both their passions soured as a result of the collateral damage of Gavin's murderous scheme. (Even Midge has her "first love" of painting ruined as a result, having chosen poorly for her subject matter.) Judy, for whom it could be presumed that she enjoyed being watched and looked at with affection, is now forced into becoming an object for gratification; worse yet, for a man whom she loved deeply, and to whom she cannot reveal her true self. And for Scottie, for all his powers of observation and deduction, he is forced to acknowledge his own ineptitude at his profession, since as the callous magistrate following Madeleine's death observes, he has the unfortunate history of "doing nothing"...just watching things fall down around him, just as he did in the first few minutes of the film. Someone I knew had a theory about Scottie's ultimate fate after Judy falls out of the tower and he loses Madeleine for the second time. Consider the dream sequence where Scottie sees his silhouette fall out of the tower onto the roof of the church of San Juan Bautista. The pose is virtually the same as the one Scottie adopts at the end, one of limp defeat and resignation to his failure, as he is poised upon the edge of the literal and figurative abyss.
Recommended for: Any fan of a psychological tale of thrilling suspense, pathos, and even romance. Vertigo is a landmark film with a story that haunts. And I cannot recommend this movie enough--it is, without question, my all-time favorite film.