Film Analysis Of Alfred Hitchcock's Film Vertigo

In order to suit his needs Hitchcock transports the locale of Vertigo (1958) to the most vertical San Francisco city where the vertiginous geometry of the place entirely threatens verticality itself. The city with its steep hills, sudden rises and falls, of high climbs, dizzying drops is most appropriate for the vertiginous circularity of the film. The city is poised between a romantic Victorian past and the rush of present day life. We were able to see the wild chase of Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) in search for the elusive Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) and the ghost who haunts her, Carlotta Valdes in such spots as the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the underside of the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point, the Mission Dolores, Ernie’s restaurant,

and the florist Podesta Baldocchi near Union Square, the Big Basin Redwood Forest and the old Spanish mission at San Juan Bautista.

Thus placing the film fully emersed in the old, mysterious, dreamlike settings of the city, they are equally balanced with modern technology and the collective past gives viewers a sense of definite decay, with no sure centre for future (Spotto 277). Through Hitchcock’s films Americans could reminiscence and ruminate about their past-a kind of nostalgia and longingness is created. When Scottie meets Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) in the shipbuilders’ office at the Embarcadero, what he says is striking: “The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast,” Elster complains quietly and referring to the old maps and woodcuts in his office he continues, “I should have liked to have lived here then-colour, excitement, power, freedom” (qtd in Spoto 280-281/qtd from the film). Here his speech echoes urbanisation that has gripped America and he also expresses a typical American sentiment of longingness for the past well expressed. And the sadness of the old things “disappearing past” is deliberately introduced to effect in Scottie and in us who are urged to identify with him, a nostalgia for bygone era (Spoto 281). Hitchcock has taken the film keeping in mind the viewers of postwar America who were nostalgic. Artist should be able to read the mind of the people. Taine has already pointed out the importance of ‘the man, milieu and

the moment’. This sounds relevant and only a good filmmaker of Hitchcock’s calibre could portray the sentiments of the people, their thoughts, culture etc. Hitchcock was able to explore the ambience of his migrated country. He was also fascinated by other cities and rural sites. Hitchcock’s amazing camera work included exact details of the setting in frame, the stunning relationship between the action and locale are precise and self-descriptive. For this no one could ever conclude that Hitchcock was an emigree who worked like a native. Hithcock devoted his time in knowing and appreciating a place that he selected to shot the scenes. Ernie’s restaurant in San Francisco was recreated in Paramount Studio with meticulous precision of details so that Scottie and Madeline could have their first encounter in a romantic environment. San Francisco culture is given a fair treatment in this romantic scene as well as the taste of the city scene in the opening twilight rooftop chase sequence revealing Scottie’s acrophobia, then the outside view of the sanatorium where Scottie is recuperating as the camera pans along. Hitchcock has shared his fondness for centring dramatic action in appropriate places with Truffaut.