Wednesday, November 9, 2011

"Vertigo"- Alfred Hitchcock

     "Vertigo" is yet another one of Hitchcock's great thrillers and movies of suspense. The movie was shot in 1958 and was based on the 1954 book, D'entre les morts, by Boileau-Narcejac. It is now considered by some to be one of the greatest films ever made along as one of Hitchcock's defining works of his career. It was filmed in San Francisco, starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. This movie shows Hitchcock's talent to capture you into the film. He uses a MacGuffin, making you think the movie is about a suicidal women in help. He also uses mirrors throughout the movie to give and hint information.
     Vertigo is about a man named John "Scottie" Ferguson, who is suffering from the fear of heights or acrophobia, which gives him vertigo. A friend, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to trail his wife, Madeleine, claiming she has been possesed. Scottie does and goes from place to place following her and after trying to kill herself by jumping into the San Francisco Bay, Scottie concludes that she is suicidal, but he is still in love with her. Finally, towards the end of the movie, they go to a Spanish Church. There Madeleine escapes from Scottie and runs up the bell tower to the very top. Scottie heres a scream and sees a body fall from the top of the bell tower, and he beleives his love Madeleine is dead. He later finds out that "Madeleine" was actually not "Madeleine", and the husband hired a fake so he could throw the real Madeleine off the bell tower, making Scottie believe she committed suicide. He figures this out by seeing  Madeleine's necklace on someone else and figures the husband must have given it to her as a award. He then takes "Madeleine" back to the church ,so he could really see what happened. They get to the top ,and he gets the whole story strait from her.Then she admits of tricking him. She hears footsteps though and falls off the bell tower and dies, leaving Scottie at the top.

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