History Film / Vertigo

If it's the comics company you're looking for, search no further than Creator/VertigoComics. For the record label, see Creator/VertigoRecords.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:Judy regrets her role in the murder plot and gets cold feet by the time she reaches the top of the bell tower. She attempts to stop Elster's plan by screaming, but it's too late.]]

* AdaptationalHeroism: [[spoiler:The novel ends with Roger Flavières strangling Renée Sourange to death and surrendering to the police. Scottie does not strangle Judy but he does indirectly cause her death by bringing her back to the tower.]]

The film was released to mixed reviews and modest box office results. Critics complained of the film being overly long, slow and too "bogged in detail." However, by the late 1960s scholar Robin Wood re-evaluated the film to be "one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us." Removed from circulation in 1973, it remained somewhat obscure.

The movie was re-released to cinemas in 1983 and on home video in 1984. This time it was a commercial hit and reviews were overwhelmingly positive. By the end of the 1980s, ''Vertigo'' [[VindicatedByHistory was regarded as one of Hitchcock's best films and highly significant in film history]], regularly ranking toward the top of the once-a-decade ''Sight & Sound'' greatest films poll (and earning the #1 position in the 2012 edition).

The movie was re-released to cinemas in 1983 and on home video in 1984. This time it was a commercial hit and reviews were overwhelmingly positive. By the end of the 1980s, ''Vertigo'' [[VindicatedByHistory was regarded as one of Hitchcock's best films and highly significant in film history]].

%%* RedemptionEqualsDeath: For [[spoiler:Judy]] in the end.

-->-- from the trailer

* AudienceSurrogate: Midge, down-to-earth and increasingly concerned about Scottie and his behavior, echoes our own reactions to him.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:Judy regrets her role in the murder plot and gets cold feet by the time she reaches the top of the bell tower. She attempts to stop Elster’s plan by screaming, but it’s too late.]]

** Averted in the original novel, where [[Gevigne was killed even before it was revealed that he had been the mastermind of the entire thing.]]

* VertigoEffect: TropeMaker and TropeNamer. The shot invented for this movie--zooming in while pulling the camera back at the same time--has become an iconic and much-used visual shorthand to indicate disorientation, shock, or fear. Here it is used for Scottie's vertigo attacks.

* {{Meganekko}}: Midge has large round glasses and fits the character type perfectly.

** As Pop Liebel tells the story of Carlotta at the Argosy Book Shop, it gets noticeably darker both inside and outside the store.

* DisneyVillainDeath: Sort of. [[spoiler:Judy was an accomplice to murder and has become The Atoner; she falls to her death at the end of the film.]]

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Gavin Elster is never punished for murdering his wife.]] This notably led to UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode demanding an alternate ending, which was shot but never released.

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Gavin Elster is never punished for murdering his wife.]] This notably led to the Hays Code demanding an alternate ending, which was shot but never released.
* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: [[spoiler:Gavin never repents and gets off scot-free for his crimes, while his partner-in-crime and lover, Judy/Madeleine, tries to repent and pays for it.]]

If it's the comics company you're looking for, search no further than Creator/VertigoComics.

* DoppelgangerReplacementLoveInterest: After Madeleine jumps off the bell tower, Scottie meets Judy Barton and has her made over to look just like Madeleine. Little does he know that the truth is a lot weirder.

* EmergingFromTheShadows: The nun in the final scene.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Midge disappears around the two-thirds point (she's present in the deleted alternate ending, though). One of the rare cases with important characters when it's probably [[JustifiedTrope justified]]: Midge's disappearance symbolizes that there's no more room for her in Scottie's obsessed mind, nor for the common sense and cold reason she personifies in the film itself. (It's hardly a coincidence that the last we see of Midge is her literally exiting.)

* PragmaticAdaptation: In turning the novel ''D'entre les morts'' into ''Vertigo'', Hitchcock and his writers shifted the setting away from France, changed the names of the characters (except Madeleine), and altered the third act,[[note]]Renee, the Judy figure, confesses the truth to Roger, the Scottie figure. In a heated moment of shock, he strangles her[[/note]] but kept the main plot thread, the lead character's vertigo, and a prominent scene at a church tower.

* PragmaticAdaptation: In turning the novel ''D'entre les morts'' into ''Vertigo'', Hitchcock and his writers shifted the setting away from France, changed the names of the characters (except Madeleine), and altered the third act[[note]]Renee, the Judy figure, confesses the truth to Roger, the Scottie figure. In a heated moment of shock, he strangles her[[/note]], but kept the main plot thread, the lead character's vertigo, and a prominent scene at a church tower.

Scottie suffers a mental breakdown after his love's death, to the point of being institutionalized with a near-catatonic depression and "nursed" by his friend and former fiancée Midge (Creator/BarbaraBelGeddes). Even after returning to some semblance of a normal life, he's haunted by grief for Madeleine, constantly seeing her in women he meets. It turns out that there is one woman who really does look a lot like Madeleine: a sharp-tongued brunette named Judy Barton (Novak again). Still haunted by the memory of his dead love, Scottie pursues a relationship with Judy. But the ghosts of the past never die, and their consequences prove to be what no one expected...

[[quoteright:310:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/vertigo_1958_film_poster.jpg]]

A classic 1958 PsychologicalThriller directed by Creator/AlfredHitchcock, adapted from the 1954 French novel ''D'entre les morts'' ("The Living and the Dead") by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.