Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock is an effective film because...

p Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock is an effective film because Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock

Many film critics and viewers have dubbed Alfred Hitchcock '92s 1958 film Vertigo a cinematic masterpiece , some even enshrining it as the highest achievement ever attained in American film . A complex and essentially philosophical meditation on love and mortality Hitchcock '92s Vertigo is an effective film because it delivers poignant visual (and audio ) symbols for corresponding , profound and hitherto ineffable themes which are articulated eloquently within the structure of a narrative film . These themes deal with the

most dramatic and crucial aspects of human existence and Hitchcock '92s harmonious composition unifies the film '92s myriad thematic dichotomies (which give the film its suspense and tension ) within the film-maker '92s aesthetic , thus demonstrating art itself as a unifying principle for the ambiguities , contradictions , and chaos-inspiring aspects of existentialism and metaphysics

Though the plot and structure of Vertigo are not essentially linear the story '92s emotional arc provides amply where the seeming disfigurements or ambiguities of the plot are vague or difficult to follow with ease . The '93vertigo '94 theme , for example , is immediately dislodged from its literal , well-understood connotations of '93the fear of heights '94 and into more ambiguous and sinister connotations from the film '92s opening credits . When the camera reveals a woman '92s face in increments : a black mask with nervous eyes , the audience plunges with an uncertain fear as this image gives way to the '93inner-eye '94 which then spirals into vertigo

The first active scene of the movie reinforces this feeling of inner dread as the audience watches Scottie clinging for his life as a doomed policeman who is trying to help him from the collapsing gutter of a skyscraper , plummets to his death . This initial scene sets up a feeling of

Vertigo Page -2- emotional '93vertigo '94 in the audience : they are desperate for Scotty to be saved and fear he will fall , horrified and simultaneously relieved when it is the unknown policemen who falls instead . This feeling of attraction /repulsion is the cornerstone motif in Hitchcock '92s Vertigo in effect symbolizing the existential paradigm of human existence : a simultaneous longing for life and death , for love and solitude , for happiness and melancholy , for the future and the past and for the known and the unknown

This central motif factors into the visual logic of the movie as well as in its dialogue , plot , and mood . The titular "Vertigo " in fact marks a kind of overall symbol for the conflicting inner-drives of human beings and the outer world as well , which is also full of contradictory impulses and ambiguity . A '93fear of heights '94 is then understood to be the fear of anything which produces a feeling of conflict or any dilemma , whether real or imagined , that causes attraction and repulsion all at once . This is also a metaphysical theme , showing the dual longing for

transcendent reality and the fear of transcendence the longing for eternity and the...