Vertigo (Collector's Edition)
by Alfred Hitchcock
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Bel Geddes, Henry Jones, James Stewart, Kim Novak, Tom HelmoreDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Brand: Universal Studios
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 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: The downward spiral...
Summary: 4 Stars
Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (1958) is about a San Francisco detective, John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) who has acrophobia (vertigo). He is hired as a private detective, after having retired from police work, by Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), in order to follow his delusional wife, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak). Though after a time, it is Scottie who is apparently losing his mind. There is a haunting scene at Muir Woods National Monument, among the coastal redwoods, where Madelaine has slipped away from Scottie. The forest acts here like a metaphor for his decent in a labyrinth of confusion.
When Madeleine gets ahead of him at the Mission at San Juan Bautista he realizes his mistake, and chases her up the tower, but he is too late to help as his vertigo prevents him from catching up to her, and he sees her fall from the roof top. Scottie's guilt pesters him from this point on, and he begins to see Madeleine whenever he sees a blond. This is Scottie's hell on earth as his obsession takes over and he circles back to the same moment, again and again. He seems to be losing his mind, and is eventually confined temporarily to a sanitarium. Once Scottie is out of the sanitarium he eventually finds a girl who looks a lot like Madeleine. We wonder if he has lost his mind, and is only seeing what he wants to see.
The vertigo that Scottie experiences, which is repeated in various circular motifs throughout the film, from spiral stairways, to the circular form of Madeleine's hair style, seems to be pointing Scottie down a vortex of confusion, as his life gets ever more lost in a madness that he can't seem to control. Hitchcock employs many ingenious devices to convey Scottie's plunge into insanity, from dream sequences, to scenes that spiral about him. In one brilliant scene Scottie and Judy are embracing in a room that spirals about them to reveal them now in a horse stall, and then again in the room, with the background turning to a brilliant, hypnotic blue. It is scenes like this, and the hypnotic pacing, as the film progressively speeds up, that reveal this movie to be the masterpiece that it is. In the last half of the movie we see why Hitchcock is the master of suspense. The film builds to a feverish pitch as Scottie's passion, and obsession, seem to be overriding his reason.
As a footnote, this film has been remastered. The original film was badly faded, and has been greatly improved through modern techniques. In October 1996, the restored "Vertigo" premiered for the first time in DTS, and 70mm, which is a format similar in frame size to the VistaVision system that the film was originally shot in. The one caveat though is that Foley's sound effects were totally re-recorded. Harris and Katz sometimes also added extra sounds, and it is said that the new mix puts too much emphasis on the film score by Bernard Hermann over the sound effects. For one wanting to hear the original mono track it is available as an option in the 2005 Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection DVD set.
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 most recent 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
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