Vertigo Analysis

I Don’t Like It, Knowing I Must Die

The title “Vertigo” itself reveals the story line of the movie, which makes the audience easy to guess what is reflected on the movie. An old college friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), asks Police detective, John Ferguson (James Stewart) played as “Scottie”, to look after his wife Madeleine Elster’s (Kim Novak) strange behavior. He is taken to believing that she is the reincarnation of a woman who died many years ago and is concerned about her stability. Scottie follows her and rescues her from an apparent suicide attempt when she jumps into San Francisco bay. He falls in love with her while he gets to know her more. While, they go to an old mission church and Scottie is unable to stop her from climbing

This dialogue from Madeleine, when they were in woods gave me goosebumps, and I was compelled to think, is she really going to die? Even though she is, how does she know? Until that part of the movie, Hitchcock has not told the audience that she is going to play the role of Gavin’s wife. But later on, before the movie ends, when the detective John had a clue that Judy is no more a different person than the woman he had been obsessed with, he takes her to the same church from where he thought Madeline had killed herself. “Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you what to do and what to say?” each word is as sharp as a knife, making Madeline unable to speak up as to why she did so. With the heart-breaking dialogues, Hitchcock was able to make the audience gasp at his every question to the woman he had lost to be shaped by another man. Starting from the light-hearted tone at the beginning of the movie, the tone shifts to the heavy heart, tragic emotions being displayed.

Hitchcock’s emotional story of obsession, manipulation and fear leads to the succession of madness and lies reflecting vertigo. The film vertigo portrays how the biggest fear can lead to the terrible accidents and how it can affect a person emotionally. And later, how the same accident helps to overcome that fear (when Scottie takes Judy back to the church tower, his fear is gone). Thus, vertigo is the melodrama around the three characters only with the depth of vicious