• Vertigo (1958)

    Hitchcock's romantic story of obsession, manipulation and fear. A detective is forced to retire after his fear of heights causes the death of a fellow officer and the girl he was hired to follow. He sees a double of the girl, causing him to transform her image onto the dead girl's body. This leads into a cycle of madness and lies.

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Vertigo
100
metacriticBased on 32 Critics
87
Based on 110 Users

Release Date: May 28th, 1958

DVD Release Date: March 31st, 1998

PG |2 hr 8 min

Plot Summary

Hitchcock's romantic story of obsession, manipulation and fear. A detective is forced to retire after his fear of heights causes the death of a fellow officer and the girl he was hired to follow. He sees a double of the girl, causing him to transform her image onto the dead girl's body. This leads into a cycle of madness and lies.

Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones, Raymond Bailey, Ellen Corby, Konstantin Shayne

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Genres: Thriller

Production Co: Paramount Pictures, Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions

Distributors: Paramount Pictures

Keywords: Hotel, Gripping, Deception, Mystery, Suspenseful, Love, Pursuit, Police officer, Investigation, 1950s, Rescue, Friend, Wife

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Cast & Crew

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Ratings & Reviews

  • 100
    Bill CosfordMiami Herald

    Easily the best thriller of this or any other recent year...It's the film that marks him as a genius, that proves the auteur (or authorial) theory of filmmaking all by itself. It's the movie that shows a distinctive stamp, the movie that could not possibly have been made by anyone else. And most important, Vertigo is immensely entertaining. It has great peformances from its stars, an overtly Wagnerian score from the celebrated Bernard Herrmann and a plot that is almost hopelessly complex. Almost. [23 Dec 1983, p.D1]

  • 100
    Michael WilmingtonChicago Tribune

    From the very first images of Saul Bass' credit sequence, the whorls and patterns revolving in darkness, the huge eye bathed in red, the movie lets us feel the heartbeat and divided soul of its hero. And its creator. It is a movie about desire, darkness and the pull toward destruction. Most of all, it is about impossible love and overwhelming fear--conveyed with consummate control and art. Watching it, we feel the fear, suffer the desire. [Restored version; 18 Oct 1996, p.1]

  • 100
    Roger EbertChicago Sun-Times

    Vertigo, which is one of the two or three best films Hitchcock ever made, is the most confessional, dealing directly with the themes that controlled his art. show more

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Awards

Nominated Art Direction
Oscars Academy Awards (1958)
Nominated Sound
Oscars Academy Awards (1958)