Vertigo: Key Facts | SparkNotes

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Full title: Vertigo

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Lead Cast: James Stewart as Scottie Ferguson, Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster

Supporting Cast: Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones, Konstantin Shayne

Producer: Alfred Hitchcock, Herbert Coleman

Writers: Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor

Genre: Mystery/Suspense

Language: English

Date of release: 1958

Awards

1958 Academy Awards:

Nominations: Best Art Direction, Best Sound

Setting (time & place): San Francisco, 1957

Major Conflict: Scottie cannot accept the death of Madeleine and struggles to re-create her in another woman who, unbeknownst to him, was behind Madeleine’s death.

Rising action: Scottie gradually descends into madness as he falls in love with Madeleine, loses her to an apparent suicide, and then attempts to recreate her in Judy.

Climax: The world of illusion Scottie has created for himself is permanently shattered when he discovers that Judy had duped him by playing the role of Madeleine and faking a suicide as part of a plot to murder the real Madeleine Elster.

Falling action: In an effort to free himself from the acrophobia and romantic delusions that led him to this point, Scottie drags Judy/Madeleine to the scene of the crime at the top of the bell tower; Judy confesses to the crime and falls to her death when she is startled by the shadowy figure of a nun.

Foreshadowing: In the opening credits, the mysterious woman’s face drenched in red is a foreshadowing of the murderous role a mysterious woman will play in the film. When Scottie faints in Midge’s arms while attempting to conquer his acrophobia on a stepstool, it prefigures his more significant incapacitation when his acrophobia prevents him from stopping Madeleine’s suicide. A close-up shot of Madeleine’s tightly wound hair—a spiral—hints at the chaos into which she will lead Scottie.