Vertigo (1958) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron are obsessed with their discussion of “Vertigo.”

Picture Title: Vertigo

Written by: Alec Coppel and Samual Taylor, with uncredited contribution by Maxwell Anderson.

Based on the novel “D’Entre Les Morts” by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac

Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Tom Helmore

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

Director cameo: At around 11 mins, wearing a gray suit walking past Gavin Elster’s shipyard

The screenplay is credited to Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, but Coppel didn’t write a word of the final draft. He is credited for contractual reasons only. Taylor read neither Coppel’s script nor the original novel. He worked solely from Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s outline of the story.

The opening title sequence designed by Saul Bass makes this the first movie to use computer graphics.

Bernard Herrmann’s score is largely inspired by Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” which, like this movie, is also about doomed love.

Uncredited second unit cameraman Irmin Roberts invented the famous “zoom out and track in” shot (now sometimes called “contra-zoom” “push/pull” or “trombone shot”) to convey the sense of vertigo to the audience. The shots were done with miniatures laid on their sides, since it was impossible to do them vertically. The view down the mission stairwell cost $19,000 for just a couple of seconds of screentime. The technique was inspired by a time when Hitchcock had fainted during a party.

This movie is often credited or blamed for creating or popularizing the misconception that vertigo means a fear of heights. For the record, the proper name for that condition is “Acrophobia”, whereas vertigo is “a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height” (Oxford Dictionary).

Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted Vera Miles to play Judy, but she became pregnant and, therefore, was unavailable.

The Empire Hotel, where Scottie eventually finds Judy living, is now the Hotel Vertigo (formerly the York) located at 940 Sutter Street in the heart of San Francisco. Novak’s character lived in Room 501, which still retains many of its aspects captured in this movie.

Scottie’s apartment is located at the corner of Lombard and Jones streets in San Francisco. The exterior remained unchanged until about 2013, when the owners did an extensive remodel. They wanted to add a front wall to screen out the noise from the schoolyard across the street.

The tree ring that Scottie and Madeleine visit was destroyed in the 2020 CZU Lightning Fire Complex that swept through Big Basin, which stood in for Muir Woods.

Hitchcock was embittered at the critical and commercial failure of this movie in 1958. He blamed this on James Stewart for “looking too old” to attract audiences any more. Hitchcock never worked with Stewart again.

When this movie opened at San Francisco’s legendary Castro Theater during its restored re-release in October of 1997 (only a few months after the death of James Stewart), it did more business there than any other theater in the U.S. that weekend.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “Juno and the Paycock”

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