Baseline Facts

  • Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

  • Released May 9th 1958

  • Budget - 2.5 million

  • Box Office - 7.3 million

  • Distributers - Paramount Pictures

Genre - Psychological Thriller

Wasn’t credited highly upon its release - box office flop

Vertigo was produced at the end of the Classical Hollywood Period.

We assess whether it is a product of the studio system, the singular vision of Hitchcock, or the result of collaboration between filmmakers.

Studio - Paramount

Contributors

Score - Bernard Hermann

Title Sequence - Saul Bass

Cinematography - Robert Burks

Actors

James Stewart

  • typically played a family man, non threatening characters,

  • collaborated with Hitchcock multiple times - Rope 1948, Rear Window 1954, etc

Kim Novak

  • loaned from Columbia Pictures for 250,000 dollars

  • sex symbol and successor to Rita Hayworth

Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey - coined in 1975