A woman’s face gives way to a kaleidoscope of credits, signaling the start of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Bernard Hermann’s haunting score. We see a woman’s face; the camera move in frist to lips, then to eyes. In the opening credits of the film, we first see an image of a woman’s eye that looks towards the audience. As the credits roll, the camera homes in on the worried features of a woman’s face, lastly to her eye which turns red and produces a regenerating spiral that takes on several different shapes and colors. The title of the film Vertigo zooms out slowly from the depths of her widening pupil. The mesmerizing title sequence for Vertigo is a collage of human eyes juxtaposed with Lissajous spirals, spidery whorls devised by a French mathematician to express numerical equations. Spiraling, vertiginous, animated designs (of various configurations and shapes) replace the closeup of the iris, and the remainder of the credits plays over a black background after the pupil is entered and the eye fades away.



Vertigo opens with a chase scene. Vertigo opens with a rooftop chase over the dark terraces of San Francisco. Vertigo opens with a short prologue that details the circumstances under which Detective John Ferguson (James Stewart) develops an acute case of acrophobia that leads to vertigo whenever he climbs a steep flight of stairs or gets more than a few feet above the ground. It opens as Scottie Ferguson realizes he has vertigo, a condition resulting in a fear of heights, when a police officer is killed trying to rescue him from falling off a building. Vertigo begins with Detective John “Scottie” Ferguson watching his partner fall to his death from a San Francisco rooftop. James Stewart plays John “Scottie” Ferguson, a San Francisco police officer. Jimmy Stewart, as police detective Scottie Ferguson, and his partner are in hot pursuit of a fugitive across the rooftops of San Francisco. The chase culminates in Scottie losing his footing on a steeply sloping roof and dangling by his fingertips from a flimsy gutter.  While pursuing a criminal across the rooftops of San Francisco, detective Scottie Ferguson slips and finds himself dangling from the gutter of a tall building. Detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is just about to collar the criminal he’s chasing when he loses his footing on a steep rooftop and finds himself dangling from a crumbling gutter, seconds away from a fatal fall. While pursuing a suspect over rooftops, John “Scottie” Ferguson (a San Francisco police detective) misjudges a leap and ends up dangling from a gutter, over a hundred feet in the air. Chasing a culprit over the rooftops of San Francisco, Stewart leaps to a new roof, misses his purchase and winds up hanging by a rain gutter several stories up. Scottie loses his footing, falls, grasps a gutter, dangles in space, looks down, gets dizzy. As he hangs onto the bending gutter and the policeman returns to help him, Scottie looks down between the buildings. A colleague falls to his death in an attempt to rescue Scottie as he looks on in horror. Attempting to save him, his partner falls to his death, leaving Scottie staring in horror at his crushed body on the pavement below. A policeman tries to help but ends up falling off the roof. The policeman with him tries to help him, loses his balance, falls to the street and dies. A policeman tries to give Scottie a hand but slips himself and falls screaming to his death. The police officer tries to grab his hand, but he falls to his death. “Gimme your hand,” says the uniformed cop who is trying to help Scottie to safety. A close-up of his reaching hand is followed by his fall from the roof to his death. The policeman slips and falls to the ground, and is presumably killed. Scottie witnesses this and clutches to the gutter. Scottie continues to cling to the gutter with no help in sight. How Scottie escapes from his predicament is never explained, but the image of him clinging desperately to the feeble lip of the building stands as a metaphor for his perilous mental state throughout the events that follow. When we last see Stewart he is still hanging from the gutter. We never see how Scottie gets down. There seems no plausible way he could have got down. 



Did he fall?



The film begins with an ominous roof-top chase scene that ends with police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson overcome with an intense dread of heights that leads to the death of a fellow officer. In the opening scene the film’s protagonist, a plain-clothes detective named Scottie (James Stewart), has a vertigo attack on a rooftop that leads to a policeman’s death. The detective, Scotty Ferguson, played by James Stewart, has a severe fear of heights after seeing a colleague fall to his death after a rooftop chase. We see the accident at the beginning of the film, at least part of it. At the film’s opening, Scottie loses his footing while chasing a suspect over rooftops, falls, and hangs over the street below, suspended only by a sagging rain gutter. Looking down, he experiences a sense of vertigo brought on by his fear of heights. Trying to pull Scottie to safety, a fellow officer falls to his death, and the incident causes Scottie to quit the force.  San Francisco police detective Scottie Fergusson develops a fear of heights and is forced to retire when a colleague falls to his death during a chase. The protagonist of Vertigo is Scottie Ferguson, a detective who retires from the police force after witnessing a traumatic incident that induces a severe and permanent condition of acrophobia.  Scottie is saved, but the traumatic experience and guilt at his colleague’s death leave him suffering from acute acrophobia and vertigo. Vertigo focuses on John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart), a San Francisco-based police detective forced into early retirement by acrophobia, a fear of heights that brings on intense dizziness, or vertigo. The film stars James Stewart as former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson, who has been forced into early retirement due to disabilities (vertigo and clinical depression) incurred in the line of duty. Stewart plays Scottie Ferguson, a policeman who quits the force because of his fear of heights. Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco police detective, is forced to retire when a freak accident gives him a severe case of acrophobia. He has developed acrophobia, vertigo, a fear of heights, because of what happened. San Francisco police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson is forced to retire after he is involved in a rooftop chase and his acrophobia and accompanying vertigo leads to the death of a fellow officer. The story features John Ferguson, a detective who retired after severe vertigo affected his ability to do his job. Ferguson is a retired detective, his career ended by the onset of a paralyzing fear of heights. John “Scotty” Ferguson, a San Francisco detective who’s had to retire from the force after an attack of acrophobia rendered him incapable of saving a fellow officer from a fatal fall. Scottie is a retired-cop-turned-private-investigator who suffers from a debilitating case of vertigo. It turns out that Scottie suffers from severe acrophobia—a deep fear of falling which results in a stultifying vertigo, and must retire from the police department unless and until he finds an unlikely cure.  The event traumatizes him with acrophobia (a fear of heights), which gives him vertigo (an extremely disorienting dizziness). He starts to suffer from vertigo when he looks down.  



After a rooftop chase in which his latent acrophobia results in the death of a police officer, San Francisco detective John “Scottie” Ferguson retires, spending much of his time with his ex-fiancee Midge Wood. Vertigo tells the story of John “Scottie” Ferguson, a detective forcibly retired from the police force, after developing vertigo, and his down to earth former fiancee, blond haired Midge, is attempting to rehabilitate him.  Scottie (James Stewart) is a middle-aged man (Stewart was 49 when the movie was shot) who lives alone (“Some people prefer it”) and has never married, a former police detective who has retired after the terrifying discovery that he suffers from vertigo—a fear of heights that indirectly leads to the death of a fellow policeman. He has somehow been rescued from his precarious perch, and is recovering from his injuries. Months after the incident, Scottie reclines in the home of Marjorie Midge Wood, a painter and underwear designer. While Midge is sketching a new brassiere design, he asks her a direct question. When Scottie asks her about her sketch of a new style of brassiere, she answers, “You’re a big boy. You know about these things.” 



Scottie spends time with his friend and former fiancée, Midge Wood, a no-nonsense, bespectacled artist who designs brassiere advertisements. Scottie is with is friend Midge, a commercial artists to whom he was once engaged and who still loves him. He commiserates with his ex-girlfriend Midge who is obviously still in love with him, though he doesn’t know it. Midge is obviously head-over-heels for him—a love that expresses itself more maternally rather than romantically—but either he doesn’t realize it or doesn’t choose to reciprocate beyond friendship. In the apartment of his ex-fiancee, Scottie and Midge discuss his career plans in light of his newly discovered acrophobia, which has prompted him to quit the police force. Midge is asking Johnny why he decided to leave the police force.  Johnny explains that his vertigo prevents him from doing his job. He has quit the police force due to his acrophobia, and does not want to be a desk jockey. Scotty is almost finished physically recuperating from his brush with death, but the cop’s death has left him with an unbearable fear of heights which causes him dizzy spells in high places. Still, he says that he is determined to overcome it. Although Scottie hopes to overcome his phobia, his longtime friend, Midge Wood, an artist who is in love with him, cautions him that only a severe emotional shock might snap him out of it. Scottie tries to gradually conquer his fear but Midge suggests another severe emotional shock may be the only cure. According to his doctors it will take a similar emotional trauma to rid him of his phobia. He attempts to cure himself of his acrophobia. He first stands on a step stool. Midge gives him a ladder chair, and Scottie is able to handle the first two steps, but when he reaches the top, he looks out the window and panics. Slowly, slowly, he climbs. He looks outside during the process and faints. He tries to control his fear, but can’t, and collapses into the arms of his friend Midge. He collapses in her arms.



*
Vertigo is plotted along a curve of recurrences, reversals, and recognitions.  It is a moody and dark tale involving sexual obsession, demonic possession and acrophobia or fear of heights. Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco detective, is forced to retire after developing acrophobia. He becomes “available Ferguson,” a self-described “wanderer.” An old school chum, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to follow his wife, Madeleine, who believes she is “possessed” by her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes. It becomes clear that she is obsessed with Carlotta Valdes, a woman that, Elster tells Scottie, Madeleine doesn’t know is her own great-grandmother. The assignment, however, draws Ferguson out of his comfortable role as observer and into a complex web of intrigue, mingled with the detective’s own fantasies and fears. In the process, Stewart falls in love with the wife, played by Kim Novak, only to see her run into the bell tower of an old Spanish Mission and, shortly afterward, while he is dizzily trying to climb the stairs after her, fall past a window. He falls in love with her, but she is later murdered and Ferguson becomes demonic in his desire to re-create her in another woman. In Vertigo, Kim Novak plays Judy Barton, who, at the insistence of shipping magnate Gavin Elster, agrees to impersonate his wife Madeleine.  Vertigo tells the story of mixed identities and a guilt-ridden  man plagued by a fear of heights. Scottie is a man suspended over an emotional and psychological abyss, into which he is doomed to plunge by a macabre obsession with a woman who doesn’t exist. What Scottie does not know is that Elster has lured a woman, Judy Barton, a look-alike of Madeleine, to impersonate her in a murderous scheme he devised to inherit his wife’s fortune: Judy is to fool Scottie, a set-to-order witness, into believing that Madeleine committed suicide. But in the meantime, Scottie, who is on a rescue mission, has fallen in love with the imposter Madeleine and she with him.



“This is where I come from …” “Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice.” 



As they view a cross-section of a tree with the approximate dates of historical events, Madeleine goes into a trance, seemingly becoming Carlotta, recounting the dates of her birth and death. Madeleine wanders deeper into the woods, and Scottie follows her. In a semi trance-like or dreamy state, Madeleine walks away from him through the “ever-living” trees and disappears again, causing Scottie to become even more intrigued with her mysterious nature. He confronts her about the jump, and tries to bring Madeleine back.  As Scottie presses her about why she jumped into the bay, and about “where” and “when” she currently is, Madeleine relates that she feels like she is walking down a long corridor, covered with mirrored fragments that reflect a life not her own, yet familiar. As she hugs a craggy, wizened tree by the seaside, she likens her life to a walk down a long corridor into darkness. By the shore, Madeleine begins to reveal fragments of her vague memories: an empty grave with no name, waiting for her; an empty room in which she sits alone; and finally a tower, bell, and garden in Spain. In her hallucinatory description, she includes all of the spots along her daily wanderings around San Francisco.



The two travel to Muir Woods and then Cypress Point along 17-Mile Drive near Pebble Beach, where Madeleine, embarrassed from confessing that her dreams sound mad, runs to the ocean. She runs towards the ocean and John chases after her. Scottie chases after her and they embrace and kiss. Scottie embraces her and assures her that he will never let her go, and their relationship is sealed with a passionate kiss. They kiss passionately as the ocean waves crash on the rocks behind them. Violins dominate the soundtrack while behind them we can see waves breaking on the cliffs. 



They kiss as the waves crash onto the rocks.