Vertigo

In line with the theme of the Magical History Tour, our ongoing series of 70mm projections begins the new year – Arsenal’s last at Potsdamer Platz – with the film that was the first to be screened in that same large-scale format at Arsenal almost 23 years ago, back when it was new: VERTIGO (USA 1958). The pull of the titular vertigo of Alfred Hitchcock’s much interpreted central work already takes hold of the viewer in the opening sequence, which was designed by Saul Bass: Police office Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) nearly falls during a rooftop chase in San Francisco, while one of his colleagues who tries to help him does indeed plummet to his death. Scottie quits the force as a consequence, traumatized and suffering from vertigo. When a schoolfriend later hires Scottie as a private detective to spy on his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who is driven by a mysterious yearning for death, he ends up in a deadly spiral of love, obsession, deception and phantasmas.