Vertigo - 1958

Vertigo Framed Poster
Bass, Saul
26 in. x 37 in.

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Vertigo (1958) is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most powerful, deep, and stunningly beautiful films (in widescreen 70 mm VistaVision) - it is a film noir that functions on multiple levels. At the time of the film's release, it was not a box-office hit, but has since been regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. The work is a mesmerizing romantic suspense/thriller about a macabre, doomed romance - a desperate love for an illusion.

It is an intense psychological study of a desperate, insecure man's twisted psyche (necrophilia) and loss of equilibrium. It follows the troubled man's obsessive search to end his vertigo (and deaths that result from his 'falling in love' affliction) and becomes a masterful study of romantic longing, identity, voyeurism, treachery and death, female victimization and degrading manipulation, the feminine "ideal," and fatal sexual obsession for a cool-blonde heroine. Hitchcock was noted for films with voyeuristic themes, and this one could be construed as part of a 'trilogy' of films with that preoccupation:

Rear Window (1954)
Vertigo (1958)
Psycho (1960)

The film's screenplay, written by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, was based upon the 1954 mystery novel D'Entre les Morts (literally meaning "From Among the Dead" or "Between Deaths") by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Boileau and Narcejac were also the authors of the story for French director Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diabolique (1955) starring Simone Signoret. The film's theme of play-acting and/or remaking a woman by male domination was also echoed in Greek legend, and in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (and My Fair Lady (1964)). The film spawned clones with similar themes, such as Brian DePalma's Obsession (1976), and director Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again (1991).