Vertigo
John "Scottie" Ferguson is a detective from San Francisco who suffers of Acrophobia, which causes him to fear heights, and therefore he must give up his job.He then meets Gavin Elster, an old friend, who wants him to follow his wife, Madeleine Elster, because he has the suspicion that she has been possessed by the spirit of a long deceased relative, Carlotta Valdes. Gavin is afraid of his wife trying to commit suicide, just like Carlotta did.
Scottie begins with the investigation and slowly he and Madeleine begin to fall in love; although, some time later Madeleine apparently commits suicide springing from a tower. Scottie is not able to avoid it because of his acrophobia, so he enters a depression due to his culpability feeling.
Later he will meet a woman who resembles Madeleine, Judy Barton, so he initiates a relation with her and tries to change her aspect in order to make her appear identic to Madeleine. Later he will discover that Madeleine and Judy were the same person, and that the whole story has been a plan prepared by Gavin and Judy to kill Madeleine.
This is undoubtely one of the best , if not the best, movies ever filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, and therefore it was nominated for an Academy Award in 1958, though finally it didn't get it.
Vertigo is held for a masterpiece, and it should not be strange, because since the beginning it is clear that this movie is going to be fantastic: the musical score by Bernard Herrmann is nowadays a collector's piece, not to forget the psychodelic opening titles, which are guessed as a kind of introduction to what we are going to see or feel later.
Besides, we should note the implicit symbolism present throughout the movie: The form of the tower's stairs, the cemetery's pathways or the sequoya's rings, as well as the use of travelling and zoom in opposite directions suggest at all times the vertigo feeling to the viewer. The ciclic structure of the movie, reforced with constant quotes to a mysterious past or the omnipresence of Madeleine's image is another stroke of the mentioned symbolism.
Another aspect which shouldn't be forgotten is the typical "Hitchcockian" tradition to let the viewer know the crime structure: in this case we learn short after Scottie knows Judy the fact that she and Madeleine were the same person, and that all together was a simple suplantation planned by Gavin Elster to kill his wife. Far from destroying the suspense feeling, this argumental resource makes now the viewer pay attention to the actually main subject matter: the future behaviour and reactions of Scottie and Judy, and by the way introduces the reason or cause the viewer was looking for.
