Vertigo (Collector's Edition)
by Alfred Hitchcock
List Price:
Our Price: $9.51
You Save: $10.47 (52%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $7.89 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Bel Geddes, Henry Jones, James Stewart, Kim Novak, Tom HelmoreDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Brand: Universal
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-03-31
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Vertigo (Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: One of the American cinema's most beautiful romances
Summary: 5 Stars
Alfred Hitchcock is my favorite filmmaker of all time. No other director (and uncredited screenwriter with his wife Alma) combines brilliantly constructed and suspenseful plots with exquisite filmaking craftsmanship. Sometimes doing as many as seven script drafts, combined with production designer sketches, Hitchcock knows what a movie will look like, scene for scene, before he starts filming and rarely deviates from the script during the filming. And VERTIGO (1958) may be his masterpiece. One of the most haunting and beautiful love stories in the American cinema, VERTIGO combines Hitchcock's inspired use of San Francisco and other Bay Area locations, Robert Burks' dreamlike color photography, production designer Henry Bumstead's beautiful use of greens and reds and grays, and Bernard Herrmann's elegant classical music score to perfection.
It is almost impossible to talk about why VERTIGO is so brilliant without discussing its mystery plot in detail. So I am going to ask my readers to do something first--see the movie on either DVD or letterboxed VHS tape, then meet back here to discuss the plot. Maybe you are scared to see the movie; don't be. Please, everyone, see the movie you have maybe put off seeing for years. I will then assume that you are at least vaguely familiar with the storyline and want to analyze its incomparably romantic and mysterious elements with me.
* * * * * *
(CAUTION: EPIC NON-STOP PLOT SPOILERS FOR THIS ENTIRE REVIEW!!) OK, I am now assuming my readers have now seen Hitchcock's VERTIGO at least once and wish to explore its fabulous mysteries in more depth. A dark and neurotic James Stewart plays Scottie Ferguson, retired San Francisco police officer because of his vertigo, or fear of heights. A shipbuilder named Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) hires Scottie to trail his mysterious wife Madeleine (a never-better Kim Novak) all over San Francisco-not because she is necessarily unfaithful, but because she is suicidal and haunted by a great-grandmother (?) who died at age 26, Madeleine's current age.
Scottie takes the job and follows Madeleine by car from a downtown florist shop, to the graveyard at Mission Dolores, to an old wooden hotel in the Western Addition, to the Palace of Legion of Honor. Friends, that is the whole city practically. He returns back to girl friend Midge Wood's (Barbara Bel Geddes) Russian Hill apartment, then his own nearby place one block east of the crooked part of Lombard Street. (A VERTIGO driving tour is very popular for movie lovers. These two could not be seen living together in 1958 because censorship was still in effect, but they spend a lot of lonely time there.) Scottie and Midge look up Madeleine's family history in an antique book store.
The next day, Scottie again follows Madeleine to the Palace of Legion of Honor at the western end of San Francisco, then down to Fort Port at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. Robert Harris and James Katz' incomparable restoration of the movie a few years ago makes the whole city seem brand new and a valentine to my childhood in the 1950's. When Madeleine jumps into San Francisco Bay, Scottie dives in to rescue her. (Mostly done in a studio because there is no staircase here, but a bunch of rocks and a sheer rock wall. I have stood where Madeleine stood--no staircase.) Scottie takes Madeleine back to his apartment at the east base of Russian Hill. We are about 50 minutes into a 128 minute movie.
Madeleine is haunted by a mission with a stable and bell tower. Bingo, San Juan Batista down the San Francisco Peninsula. Scottie and Madeleine go there. In the stable, the two share a kiss and Madeleine says enigmatically, "It wasn't supposed to happen this way." She runs away from Scottie, who chases her up the mission's bell tower, (The tower was built in a studio. The real mission has no tower.) But an accident occurs and Madeleine falls to her death. Scottie goes into a state of shock as an inquest takes place. The verdict is "suicide while of unsound mind." Scottie has now caused the death of two people, including a cop in the opening scene. There is a haunting shot of Scottie walking around an empty night Union Square in downtown San Francisco, then a vivid color nightmare. Midge is with Scottie in a hospital to help him recover. This will be her last scene in the movie. Long fade-out.
Fade-in on a spectacular 180 degree panorama of 1958 San Francisco, the way it looked when I was seven years old on the Peninsula. Scottie is walking through Union Square in sunny daytime this time and spots a beautiful shop girl working at I. Magnin. He follows her to the York Hotel, with its beautiful green neon light at night. The woman is named Judy Barton from Salina, Kansas, and she truly reminds Scottie of the dead Madeleine. Scottie first met Madeleine at Ernie's Restaurant at the east end of North Beach. He takes Judy there for dinner, then becomes obsessed with transforming her into Madeleine. He takes her to Ransohoff's to get the same gray suit that Madeleine wore, then has Judy match Madeleine's hair style. Stewart bravely does nothing to make Scottie any more likeable. An obsessed Scottie wants an exact duplicate of his beloved Madeleine. There is a lovely sunny day scene at the Palace of Fine Arts near the San Francisco Marina with them out walking--I have never seen another movie with so many San Francisco locales used so creatively and dramatically, including dozens of hills for a lead character with vertigo. Not even BULLITT (1968).
Then Hitchcock and writer Samuel Taylor do something shocking-3/4 of the way through the movie, they give away the central mystery plot to just the audience as Judy writes a letter to Scottie, reads it voice-over to us, then throws it away. Judy really IS Madeleine, or at least a surrogate Madeleine. Gavin Elster killed his wife Madeleine, then hired Judy to pose as Madeleine, knowing that Scottie had a fear of heights. It was the real Madeleine who was already dead and thrown by Elster off the bell tower. But Judy had not counted on falling in love with Scottie.
In an incredible kissing scene, Scottie and Judy are on an apartment turntable that goes 720 degrees, with the eerie green glow from the YORK hotel neon sign at night, backed by Herrmann's incomparable music. Both characters get dizzy. But a beautiful necklace then gives away the secret to Scottie. He has been deceived, fallen in love with an imposter, and doesn't like it. The two head down the Peninsula again at night to the San Juan Baptista mission. "I need to go back into the past one more time, Judy. Then everything will be clear." Will he throw her off the bell tower, causing a third death?
The very enigmatic ending of VERTIGO is open to many interpretations, which may be why Hitchcock discarded a short final optimistic scene that is on the DVD under Bonuses. Anyway, Scottie and Judy both get to "the scene of the crime", the top of the bell tower. A nun appears and says, "I heard voices". Caught off-guard by a figure who may remind her of the ghost of Madeleine, or confused when Scottie calls her "Madeleine" a couple of times by accident, Judy falls backward to her death. "God have mercy," the nun says. As the movie ends, Scottie is looking down at the lower tile roof where his beloved Judy has died.
Will he join her in death? I doubt it. My feeling is that Scottie is now cured of his acrophobia and looking down at the third person he has let die accidentally since the opening scene. It packs a real wallop, but seems the perfect cryptic ending for one of the most disturbing and romantic love stories of all time. The most unforgettable romances often end in death. So it is with VERTIGO, one of the great motion pictures of all time.
But so much is not in this plot summary of VERTIGO. There are the towerihg performances by James Stewart and Kim Novak. He has never seemed so troubled and frightening, and she gives the performance of a lifetime as two different women. Of course, Edith Head had a fun time creating Madeleine's wardrobe in greens and grays, then giving Judy both her own wardrobe and Madeleine's in the second half. Though much of the movie was filmed in a studio, production designer Henry Bumstead (still active-MILLION DOLLAR BABY) created dozens of San Francisco interiors on sound stages so that you never know it is not fully on location. The rear projections as Scottie follows Madeleine all over the city twice are outstanding.
But the real glory of this incomparably romantic and enthralling movie for me are Robert Burks' dreamlike mustard-haze photography and Bernard Herrmann's classical score that is played over whole driving scenes with no dialogue. It is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful and hypnotic scores in movie history. And Hitchcock does magical things with color--greens in a dress contrast against a hotel neon sign and a blouse. And a car. The red in a bathrobe plays off the rear wallpaper at Ernie's. Madeleine and Judy are both in gray. I love the mission graveyard and have been there looking for the grave marker. And the orange in the Golden Gate Bridge parallels a scene in Muir Woods (really Big Basin near San Juan Baptista) with brownish-orange redwoods. It is a movie of rich colors and richer music. They cast an unforgettable spell over the viewer.
This masterpiece should turn you on to the incomparable cinematic universe of Alfred Hitchcock, which Amazon should help sell to you at discount prices. Try NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) next to discover how lighthearted he could be, then the American Gothic nightmare PSYCHO (1960) for pure terror and scares, and the carefully plotted and suspenseful Hitchcock favorite SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943). Happy viewing!
Summary of Vertigo (Collector's Edition)
Considered by many to be director Alfred Hitchcock's greatest achievement, Leonard Maltin gives Vertigo four stars, hailing it as "A genuinely great motion picture." Set among San Francisco's renown landmarks, James Stewart is brilliant as Scottie Ferguson, an acrophobic detective hired to shadow a friend's suicidal wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak). After he saves her from drowning in the bay, Scottie's interest shifts from business to fascination with the icy, alluring blonde. When he finds another woman remarkably like his lost love, the now obsessed detective must unravel the secrets of the past to find the key to his future.Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the 1992 survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. --Jim Emerson
Similar DVD Movies
Shadow of a DoubtNBC Universal; Release date: 2006-02-07; DVD
Best price: $12.58
Price in other shops:
Strangers on a Train (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2004-09-07; DVD
Best price: $4.35
Price in other shops:
![Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock [All Region, Import] Image](/images/Rear-Window-1954-Alfred-Hitchcock-All-Region-Import-B0032JQ6QI-X.jpg)
Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock [All Region, Import]DVD
Best price: $11.99
MarnieNBC Universal; Release date: 2006-02-07; DVD
Best price: $12.69
Price in other shops:
The Birds (Collector's Edition)Universal Studios; Release date: 2000-03-28; DVD
Best price: $10.93
Price in other shops:
RopeNBC Universal; Release date: 2006-06-20; DVD
Best price: $12.69
Price in other shops:
Dial M for MurderWarner Brothers; Release date: 2004-09-07; DVD
Best price: $8.73
Price in other shops:
The Man Who Knew Too MuchNBC Universal; Release date: 2006-02-07; DVD
Best price: $12.67
Price in other shops:
Rear Window (Collector's Edition)Universal Studios; Release date: 2001-03-06; DVD
Best price: $10.33
Price in other shops:
North by Northwest (Two-Disc 50th Anniversary Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2009-11-03; DVD
Best price: $9.49
Price in other shops: