Hitchcock's tale of obsession, acrophobia, and doubled identity opened to a lukewarm critical reception and modest box office, considered a disappointment at the time. Decades later, critical opinion reversed dramatically: in 2012, the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound poll named 'Vertigo' the greatest film ever made, dethroning 'Citizen Kane' after fifty years atop the ranking.
James Stewart plays Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco detective forced into early retirement by crippling vertigo after a rooftop chase, who then becomes obsessively entangled with a woman who may not be who she seems. Hitchcock built the film's queasy visual signature — a swirling combination of tracking-in and zooming-out, now called the 'dolly zoom' or the 'Vertigo effect' — using a custom-built rig to physically simulate the sensation of falling while standing still.
Audiences and critics in 1958 found the film's structure strange and its pacing slow; some reviewers dismissed it as one of Hitchcock's lesser efforts, overshadowed that year by other releases. It underperformed relative to Hitchcock's prior hits and was pulled from circulation for years afterward due to rights disputes, which paradoxically heightened its mystique.
Its reputation rose steadily through re-releases in the 1980s and serious critical reassessment, culminating in 2012 when Sight & Sound's international critics' poll crowned it the best film ever made — the first time in fifty years that 'Citizen Kane' had been unseated. Scholars now point to its unusually frank treatment of obsession, grief, and manufactured identity as decades ahead of its time.
Key people: Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Kim Novak