Vertigo
- LAST REVIEWED: 19 June 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 October 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0062
- LAST REVIEWED: 19 June 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 October 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0062
Introduction
Alfred Hitchcock made Vertigo during an especially creative period of 1958–1960, when he released three historic films, Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). Each took a radically distinctive approach to the “suspense thriller.” With its overtones of mystery, romance, and the supernatural, Vertigo resembles Rebecca (1940) pushed over into the realm of the fantastic, without the irony saturating the earlier film. Despite its stellar cast, James Stewart, Kim Novak (1958’s top female box-office star), and Barbara Bel Geddes, it inspired mediocre reviews and a relatively poor financial return. Truffaut’s extensive 1962 interviews with Hitchcock reveal that he was devastated by the film’s poor reception, blaming, among other factors, Stewart’s age (fifty—twice that of Novak) for the film’s unimpressive showing. Hitchcock withdrew Vertigo and several other films from circulation between 1973 and 1983, for financial reasons. But despite initial lukewarm reactions, and the film’s unavailability to the public, critics, and journalists for a decade, Vertigo is one of the most thoroughly documented and analyzed films in history. It has risen steadily in “Top Ten” polls, often reaching the number one or two spot. (As of 4 July 2011 it ranks ninth in the AFI’s 100 Years . . . 100 Movies poll, and fourth in Sight & Sound’s International Critics Poll.) Now regarded as a defining work in Hitchcock’s canon, Vertigo may be his most “personal” film. It metaphorically comments, with great profundity, upon the process and meaning of making films and seems to convey, through the suffering of its protagonists, the director’s own powerful emotions. Thematically, the film reiterates Hitchcock’s best-known obsessions, including the attractions of an “icy” blonde who turns out to be warm-blooded and sexual fetishes such as scopophilia. Although these themes richly inhabit other Hitchcock films, Vertigo places singular emphasis on male power and control over women, men’s fear of their own often ill-repressed femininity, the role of “theatricality” in film, and the nature of suspense. For students of film, following the critical fortunes of Vertigo offers an opportunity to study important currents in cinema theory and criticism, especially feminist film criticism, in which Vertigo has been considered a prime example of women’s oppression in mainstream cinema and Hitchcock’s confessional deconstruction of that oppression. This bibliography aims to represent in a balanced way the major journalistic and critical debates around Vertigo, highlighting representative books, essays, reviews, films, and visual works that approach Vertigo from diverse disciplines.
Book-Length Studies
These book-length studies are not thematically unified, but bring to our attention the fact that Vertigo is considered rich enough (like, e.g., Psycho and The Birds [1963]) to warrant more than one such work, often in languages other than English. Because these books vary in their thematic concerns, most of them might be placed under other categories. Auiler 1998 is an authoritative work on the restoration of Vertigo in 1996. Barr 2002 is an important entry in the distinguished British Film Institute monographs on individual films and is a must for researchers on Hitchcock and Vertigo. Castro de Paz 1999 is a detailed formalist study of the film in Spanish; Trías 1998 provides an overview of the spiral motif in Hitchcock’s films from one of Spain’s most prominent philosophers. Marocco 2003 is an innovative sociocultural reading of the film. Together these books are indicative of the range and especially the depth of Vertigo studies internationally. Kraft and Leventhal 2002 places the film in the context of Hitchcock’s use of San Francisco as a location with strong historical connotations.
Auiler, Dan. Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.
Stands out in its historical treatment of the film’s production. Examines studio records, contemporary reviews, other archival materials, and reports on extensive interviews with the film’s creators. This well-illustrated book appeared after Vertigo’s “third major release in four decades” (p. xv), challenges legends surrounding the film, and recounts how Harris and Katz achieved the meticulous 1996 restoration of color and sound.
Barr, Charles. Vertigo. London, England: British Film Institute, 2002.
Barr balances historical, textual, and interpretive approaches to Vertigo, documenting the production process and the work of contributors. “Obsession” places Vertigo in the context of Hitchcock’s career. “Construction” details building the script using the work of many writers. “Illusion” explores literary influences. “Revelation” describes the film’s ending(s) and breaks down technical details of scenes.
Castro de Paz, José Luis. Alfred Hitchcock: Vértigo—De entre los muertos: Estudio critico. Barcelona: Paidós, 1999.
An in-depth critical analysis of the film, emphasizing camera movement, identification, narrative, staging, and the discourse on male love and desire. Emphasizes Vertigo’s importance as both one of the last films of classical Hollywood cinema and as formalistically modernist.
Kraft, Jeff, and Aaron Leventhal. Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock’s San Francisco. Foreword by Patricia Hitchcock. Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2002.
A careful analysis of how Hitchcock used both location and studio shooting in the films set in this region. The book features a long section (pp. 96–165) on Vertigo, appropriately subtitled “Hitchcock’s Tortured Valentine to the City,” which includes vintage and contemporary photos of the film’s settings and performs close topographical and interpretive work on these iconic locations.
Marocco, Paulo. Vertigo: La donna che visse due volte di Alfred Hitchcock; Lo sguardo dell’ozio nell’America del lavoro. Genoa, Italy: Le Mani, 2003.
Mathematician Paulo Marocco’s unorthodox sociocultural reading of Vertigo focuses on questions of time, especially the question of “leisure time,” and also considers the film’s self-reflexivity.
Trías, Eugenio. Vértigo y pasión: Un ensayo sobre la película “Vertigo” de Alfred Hitchcock. Madrid: Taurus, 1998.
Spanish philosopher Eugenio Trías expands upon his earlier work on Vertigo. Placing the film within the context of Hitchcock’s broad concerns, the book features a section dealing with the “spiral of passion” in all of Hitchcock’s films, and there is another that deals with Vertigo, breaking the film into five “movements” and unraveling its concerns with identity, genre, and repetition.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Accounting, Motion Picture
- Acting
- Action Cinema
- Adaptation
- Advertising and Promotion
- African American Cinema
- African American Stars
- African Cinema
- AIDS in Film and Television
- Akerman, Chantal
- Allen, Woody
- Almodóvar, Pedro
- Alphaville
- Altman, Robert
- American Cinema, 1895-1915
- American Cinema, 1939-1975
- American Cinema, 1976 to Present
- American Independent Cinema
- American Independent Cinema, Producers
- American Public Broadcasting
- Anderson, Wes
- Animals in Film and Media
- Animation and the Animated Film
- Anime
- Arbuckle, Roscoe
- Architecture and Cinema
- Argentine Cinema
- Aronofsky, Darren
- Art Cinema
- Arzner, Dorothy
- Asian American Cinema
- Asian Television
- Astaire, Fred and Rogers, Ginger
- Australian Cinema
- Auteurism
- Authorship, Television
- Avant-Garde and Experimental Film
- Bachchan, Amitabh
- Battle of Algiers, The
- Battleship Potemkin, The
- Bazin, André
- Bergman, Ingmar
- Bernstein, Elmer
- Bertolucci, Bernardo
- Bigelow, Kathryn
- Biopics
- Birth of a Nation, The
- Blade Runner
- Blockbusters
- Brakhage, Stan
- Brando, Marlon
- Brazilian Cinema
- Breaking Bad
- Bresson, Robert
- British Cinema
- Broadcasting, Australian
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Burnett, Charles
- Buñuel, Luis
- Cameron, James
- Campion, Jane
- Canadian Cinema
- Capra, Frank
- Carpenter, John
- Casablanca
- Cassavetes, John
- Cavell, Stanley
- Censorship
- Chan, Jackie
- Chaplin, Charles
- Children in Film
- Chinese Cinema
- Cinecittà Studios
- Cinema and Media Industries, Creative Labor in
- Cinema and the Visual Arts
- Cinematography and Cinematographers
- Cinephilia
- Citizen Kane
- City in Film, The
- Cocteau, Jean
- Coen Brothers, The
- Colonial Educational Film
- Color
- Comedy, Film
- Comedy, Television
- Comics, Film, and Media
- Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI)
- Copland, Aaron
- Coppola, Francis Ford
- Copyright and Piracy
- Corman, Roger
- Costume and Fashion
- Cronenberg, David
- Cuban Cinema
- Cult Cinema
- 3D Cinema
- Dance and Film
- de Oliveira, Manoel
- Dean, James
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Denis, Claire
- Deren, Maya
- Design, Art, Set, and Production
- Detective Films
- Dietrich, Marlene
- Digital Media and Convergence Culture
- Directors
- Disability
- Disney, Walt
- Doctor Who
- Documentary Film
- Downton Abbey
- Dreyer, Carl Theodor
- Eastern European Television
- Eastwood, Clint
- Ecocinema
- Eisenstein, Sergei
- Elfman, Danny
- Epic Film
- Essay Film
- Ethnographic Film
- European Television
- Exhibition and Distribution
- Exploitation Film
- Fairbanks, Douglas
- Fan Studies
- Fantasy
- Fellini, Federico
- Festivals
- Film Aesthetics
- Film and Literature
- Film Guilds and Unions
- Film, Historical
- Film Noir
- Film Preservation and Restoration
- Film Theory and Criticism, Science Fiction
- Film Theory Before 1945
- Film Theory, Psychoanalytic
- Finance Film, The
- Ford, John
- French Cinema
- Game of Thrones
- Gance, Abel
- Gangster Films
- Garbo, Greta
- Garland, Judy
- German Cinema
- Gilliam, Terry
- Global Television Industry
- Godard, Jean-Luc
- Godfather Trilogy, The
- Godzilla
- Greek Cinema
- Griffith, D.W.
- Hammett, Dashiell
- Haneke, Michael
- Hawks, Howard
- Haynes, Todd
- Hepburn, Katharine
- Herrmann, Bernard
- Herzog, Werner
- Hindi Cinema, Popular
- Hitchcock, Alfred
- Hollywood Studios
- Holocaust Cinema
- Homeland
- Hong Kong Cinema
- Horror-Comedy
- Hsiao-Hsien, Hou
- Hungarian Cinema
- Icelandic Cinema
- Immigration and Cinema
- Indigenous Media
- Industrial, Educational, and Instructional Television and ...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- Iranian Cinema
- Irish Cinema
- Israeli Cinema
- It Happened One Night
- Italian Americans in Cinema and Media
- Italian Cinema
- Japanese Cinema
- Jazz Singer, The
- Jews in American Cinema and Media
- Keaton, Buster
- King Kong
- Kitano, Takeshi
- Korean Cinema
- Kracauer, Siegfried
- Kubrick, Stanley
- Lang, Fritz
- Latin American Cinema
- Latina/o Americans in Film and Television
- Lee, Ang
- Lee, Chang-dong
- Lee, Spike
- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Cin...
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The
- Los Angeles and Cinema
- Lubitsch, Ernst
- Lumet, Sidney
- Lupino, Ida
- Lynch, David
- Mad Men
- Marker, Chris
- Martel, Lucrecia
- Marxism
- Masculinity in Film
- Media, Community
- Media Ecology
- Melodrama
- Memory and the Flashback in Cinema
- Metz, Christian
- Mexican Film
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Ming-liang, Tsai
- Minnelli, Vincente
- Miyazaki, Hayao
- Méliès, Georges
- Modernism and Film
- Mészáros, Márta
- Music and Cinema, Classical Hollywood
- Music and Cinema, Global Practices
- Music, Television
- Music Video
- Musicals
- Musicals on Television
- Narrative
- Native Americans
- New Media Art
- New Media Policy
- New Media Theory
- New York City and Cinema
- New Zealand Cinema
- Opera and Film
- Ophuls, Max
- Orphan Films
- Oshima, Nagisa
- Ozu, Yasujiro
- Panh, Rithy
- Pasolini, Pier Paolo
- Passion of Joan of Arc, The
- Peckinpah, Sam
- Pedagogy
- Philosophy and Film
- Photography and Cinema
- Pickford, Mary
- Planet of the Apes
- Poems, Novels, and Plays About Film
- Poitier, Sidney
- Polanski, Roman
- Polish Cinema
- Politics, Hollywood and
- Pop, Blues, and Jazz in Film
- Pornography
- Postcolonial Theory in Film
- Potter, Sally
- Prime Time Drama
- Psycho
- Queer Television
- Queer Theory
- Race and Cinema
- Radio and Sound Studies
- Ray, Nicholas
- Ray, Satyajit
- Reality Television
- Reenactment in Cinema and Media
- Regulation, Television
- Religion and Film
- Remakes, Sequels and Prequels
- Renoir, Jean
- Repo Man
- Resnais, Alain
- Romanian Cinema
- Romantic Comedy, American
- Rossellini, Roberto
- Russian Cinema
- Saturday Night Live
- Scandinavian Cinema
- Scorsese, Martin
- Scott, Ridley
- Searchers, The
- Seinfeld
- Sennett, Mack
- Sesame Street
- Shakespeare on Film
- Silent Film
- Simpsons, The
- Singin’ in the Rain
- Sirk, Douglas
- Soap Operas
- Social Class
- Social Problem Films
- Soderbergh, Steven
- Sound Design, Film
- Sound, Film
- Spanish Cinema
- Spanish-Language Television
- Spielberg, Steven
- Sports and Media
- Sports in Film
- Stand-Up Comedians
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Stardom
- Stop-Motion Animation
- Streaming Television
- Sturges, Preston
- Surrealism and Film
- Taiwanese Cinema
- Talk Shows
- Tarantino, Quentin
- Tarkovsky, Andrei
- Television Audiences
- Television Celebrity
- Television, History of
- Television Industry, American
- Theater and Film
- Theory, Cognitive Film
- Theory, Critical Media
- Theory, Feminist Film
- Theory, Film
- Theory, Trauma
- Touch of Evil
- Transnational and Diasporic Cinema
- Trinh, T. Minh-ha
- Truffaut, François
- Turkish Cinema
- Twilight Zone, The
- Twin Peaks
- Varda, Agnès
- Vertigo
- Vertov, Dziga
- Video and Computer Games
- Video Installation
- Violence and Cinema
- Virtual Reality
- Visconti, Luchino
- Von Sternberg, Josef
- Von Stroheim, Erich
- von Trier, Lars
- War Film
- Warhol, The Films of Andy
- Waters, John
- Wayne, John
- Weerasethakul, Apichatpong
- Weir, Peter
- Welles, Orson
- Whedon, Joss
- Whiteness
- Wilder, Billy
- Williams, John
- Wire, The
- Wiseman, Frederick
- Wizard of Oz, The
- Women and Film
- Women and the Silent Screen
- Wong, Anna May
- Wong, Kar-wai
- Woo, John
- Wood, Natalie
- Yimou, Zhang
- YouTube
- Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema
- Zinnemann, Fred
- Zombies in Cinema and Media