Cinema Mythologica: Vertigo (1958)

Love robots, doppelgängers and tragic heroes: behind these iconic film characters lies a mythical past. Although most films are set in the present or the future, classical myths play a significant role throughout Hollywood. Countless films are inspired by archetypal narrative patterns and mythical characters, particularly when they deal with contemporary themes such as AI, gender and psychology. In the Cinema Mythologica series, a collaboration between De Uitkijk and classicist Koen Vacano, we uncover the hidden mythical layers of film history, from Oedipus complexes to narcissistic algorithms. Each film features a short introduction in English, inviting you to view the film through a mythological lens.

Detective ‘Scotty’ Ferguson finds himself with nothing to do after being suspended by the San Francisco Police Department due to an extreme fear of heights. With time on his hands, he comes to the aid of an old friend. His friend’s wife, Madeleine, is behaving strangely, so Scotty is assigned to shadow her. It soon becomes clear that the suspended detective has fallen obsessively in love with the blonde woman he is shadowing.

In Vertigo, Hitchcock plays an ingenious game with illusion and reality; is what the viewer sees a reflection of Scotty’s perceptions, or are they mere figments of his imagination? The now widely used, dizzying camera effect, in which the camera moves backwards whilst zooming in at the same time, takes its name from this film: the ‘Vertigo Effect’.