#Alfred hitchcock vertigo switch review plus#

Raymond Bailey, Ellen Corby, Konstantin Shayne and Lee Patrick handle lesser roles competently.īernard Herrmann‘s music, conducted by Muir Mathieson overseas, is properly atmospheric and Hal Pereira-Henry Bumstead art direction, plus photographic effects of John P. Tom Helmore, as rich shipbuilder, is a convincing heavy, and Henry Jones has one memorable, lifelike scene as the official presiding at a coroner’s inquest. Supporting players are all excellent, with Barbara Bel Geddes, in limited role of Stewart’s down-to-earth girl friend, standout for providing early dashes of humor. When he comes out, still a trifle unbalanced, he keeps hunting for girl who resembles dead girl, eventually finds her and, in a rip-snorting denouement, discovers he’s been tricked–that this girl is, indeed, his supposedly dead mystery woman who, with the shipbuilder, played on Stewart’s fear of height to allow the shipbuilder to push wife off the mission belltower.įilm’s last minute, in which Stewart fights off acrophobia to drag Miss Novak to top of belltower, finds she still loves him and then sees her totter and fall to her death through mortal fright of an approaching nun, is a spectacular scene, gorgeously conceived.īut by then more than two hours have gone by, and it’s questionable whether that much time should be devoted to what is basically only a psychological murder mystery. Stewart goes off his rocker and winds up in a mental institution. Stewart, of course, falls in love with her and eventually is lured to the high belltower of an old mission, San Juan Bautista, where his acrophobia prevents him from climbing high enough to stop the girl’s suicide. This may be because: (1) Hitchcock became overly enamored with the vertiginous beauty of Frisco or (2) the Alec Coppel-Samuel Taylor screenplay (from the novel “D’entre Les Morts” by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac) just takes too long to get off the ground.įilm opens with a rackling scene in which Stewart’s acrophobia is explained: he hangs from top of a building in midst of chasing a robber over rooftops and watches a police buddy plunge to his death.īut for the next hour the action is mainly psychic, with Stewart hired by a rich shipbuilder to watch the shipowner’s wife (Novak) as she loses her mental moorings, attempts suicide and immerses herself in the gloomy maunderings of her mad great-grandmother. Unfortunately, even that mastery is not enough to overcome one major fault, for the plain fact is that the film’s first half is too slow and too long. Through all of this runs Hitchcock’s directorial hand, cutting, angling and gimmicking with mastery. Developed by the award-winning adventure game studio Pendulo Studios.Unbilled, but certainly a prime factor in whatever success film may have, is the city of San Francisco, which has never been photographed so extensively and in such exquisite color as Robert Burks and his crew have here achieved.

Explore several timelines to cross-check the events and separate reality from deceptive memories.Investigate through the vision of three characters: everyone has a different story to tell.Live a powerful narrative experience paying tribute to the visual and storytelling techniques of the thriller genre.An original story about obsession, manipulation and madness, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo.Prepare yourself for a most disturbing investigation inside the human mind: truth is sometimes worse than madness. As he starts therapy, he will try to uncover what really happened on that tragic day. Traumatized by the event, he begins to suffer from severe vertigo. Ed Miller, a writer, came out unscathed from his car crash down into Brody Canyon, California.Įven though no one was found inside the car wreckage, Ed insists that he was traveling with his wife and daughter.

Alfred hitchcock vertigo switch review