In his interviews with Francois Truffaut he stated, “The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema.” Vertigo was filmed with long stretches of silence, but scored by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann: scenes of the introductory chase, Scottie’s tailing of Madeleine with drives through San Francisco streets, through a flower shop, at the cemetery of the Mission Dolores, and at the Art Gallery at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Hitchcock had started as a silent filmmaker and believed that in many ways it was superior form of film making. Rather than communicate them in scripted dialogue, these elements were communicated symbolically and visually. It was not only fear Hitchcock was trying to excise in Vertigo, but his own obsessions and subconscious feelings. “The only way to get rid of my fears is to make a film about them,” he once said. He was in the hospital for a month for the latter, where he contemplated his own death. During preparation of the last version involving Hitchcock and Samuel Taylor, Hitchcock was hospitalized twice in two months for a naval hernia and then serious gallstone surgery. In writing the script for Vertigo, many screenwriters were involved, and versions changed. In the case of Hitchcock, his film was based on the book D’Entre les Morts (Between Deaths) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, where the same obsessive search for a dead love then creates the makeover of the same/different woman. This myth has inspired countless works of literature and art. On their journey out, Orpheus thought he was fooled, he looked back at Eurydice before they reached the light, and Eurydice was pulled back among the dead. His love was so strong that the god Hades let her go, on condition that Orpheus be patient and not look at her until they exit. Indeed, the very premise is rooted in the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where Orpheus travels to the underworld to retrieve his dead wife. Yet this film, obsessed with the hopeless task of bringing a lost love back from the dead, leads to such interpretation. McKittrick Hotel The Henry F.Alfred Hitchcock never admitted that he used any symbolism in his masterpiece, Vertigo, let alone incorporating any mythic elements.Scottie Follows Madeleine - 4 Lincoln Park to the Western Addition.Art Gallery and The Portrait Of Carlotta Palace of the Legion Of Honor, Lincoln Park.
The confusion of James Stewart's character Scottie is perfectly captured as he follows the entranced Kim Novak's Madeleine around the vertiginous streets of the city.
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has been a huge audience favorite since it premiered in San Francisco at the Stage Door Theater at 420 Mason Street on May 9, 1958.