SUBJECTS

Deception -- Drama, Impostors and imposture -- California -- San Francisco -- Drama, Man-woman relationships -- California -- San Francisco -- Drama, Memory -- Drama, Murder -- California -- San Francisco -- Drama

Vertigo

featuring

James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore,

A radical meditation on man’s obsession with illusion, Vertigo reflects back on itself as cinema and as a sadly ironic view of romantic love in the fifties. James Stewart was never less “romantic” than in this film; his urgency is frightening and compelling. Formally, and in its deeply felt expression of the ultimate love triangle—man, woman, and death—this is Hitchcock’s most poetic film. As Marilyn Fabe wrote, “The hero’s simultaneous desire and dread are given brilliant and haunting visual expression through the ambivalent camera movements—especially the combination of forward zooms and reverse tracking shots.”

Judy Bloch
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Alec Coppel
  • Samuel Taylor
Based On
  • The novel D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac

Cinematographer
  • Robert Burks
Print Info
  • Color
  • 'Scope 35mm
  • 128 mins
Source
  • NBC Universal
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Vertigo documents  

Jacques Rivette/ John Carpenter: insularities compared (article), LOLA Press, Emmanuel Siety, 2012

Losing it : a Vertigo restoration comedy (article), Ray Davis, 1998

Making sure 'Vertigo' is a heady experience (article), Los Angeles Times, Donald Liebenson, 1997

Vertigo (program note), Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 1997

Vertigo takes restoration to new heights (article), Los Angeles Times, Bill Desowitz, 1996

Still a dizzying experience (article), Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan, 1996

Dating Vertigo (article), L.A. Weekly, David Thomson, 1996

The blonde that got away (article), Us Weekly, Peter Travers, 1996

As an expression of racking emotion, and as a trip into an eroticized universe, 'Vertigo' is nonpareil (article), SF Weekly, Michael Sragow, 1996

Correspondence. Vertigo. (correspondence), Steven Mintz, 1996

Displaying 10 of 43 publicly available documents.


View all Vertigo documentation on CineFiles.