Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo Ending, explained

The Vertigo The last scene sums up all the qualities that made Alfred Hitchcock such an important filmmaker. Often regarded as his best work and considered by many to be the greatest film of all time, it’s safe to say every modern thriller has a bit of Vertigo In its synthesis. This is because the 1958 movie followed many conventions of the traditional film noir, while improving the genre for the perfect balance between a harrowing mystery and a beautiful love story. Clashing the two elements through a succession of twists, Vertigo Leads to a shocking, unrelenting ending typical of Hitchcock’s work.

The film follows Scottie (James Stewart), a detective forced to retire due to his acrophobia – that is, a great fear of heights, which is constantly symbolized in Vertigo Through the use of spirals. He reluctantly accepts a mission from a dear friend, which is not as simple as he had anticipated. Set out to follow his friend’s wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), and investigate her puzzling daily activities, Scotty becomes increasingly obsessed and fixated with the woman, unaware that the person he is following is just impersonating his friend’s wife. In a shocking murder scheme.

As Scottie discovers Madeleine and Judy are the same person

Vertigo featured an iconic Hitchcock twist

The first of many twists in Vertigo Happens when Scotty witnesses Madeleine falling to her deathBut she is not who he thinks she is. The body is the real Madeleine, but the woman Scotty fell in love with is still alive. When the two meet again in VertigoKim Novak’s character introduces herself as Judy, and although she looks a lot different than Madeleine now, Scotty is quick to see the resemblance. Since Scotty is still the man Judy fell in love with, she feels guilty for betraying him. On the other hand, Scotty does everything to make Judy look and act exactly like her Madeleine impersonation.

Judy even drafts a letter to Scottie explaining how Madeleine’s husband, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), used Scottie’s acrophobia to plan his wife’s death. But she makes the terrible mistake of ripping up the note. Being the competent detective that he is, Scotty eventually finds out that Judy and “Madeleine” are the same person because of the former’s necklace. This is the same one shown in the painting of Carlotta Valdes, the mistress with whom the fake Madeleine was obsessed.

In one of those moments that make Vertigo Hold up today, Scotty tells Judy she “Do not keep souvenirs of a murder“, but that’s exactly what he does by trying to recreate Madeleine in his makeover of her. Another way to interpret the necklace’s symbol is that Judy subconsciously wears it because, deep in her heart, she wanted Scotty to find the truth. The necklace ties past, present, and future together, since it Once again seals the fate of Scotty’s obsession with deathAllusion to Judy’s downfall at the end of Vertigo.

Like Judy Dies

It ties back to Madeleine’s death

To understand what leads to Judy’s death at the end of VertigoIt is important to dissect the circumstances of Madeleine’s death first. Due to Judy’s resemblance to Gavin Elster’s wife, he hires her to impersonate Madeleine, primarily to fool Scotty. Judy, as Madeleine, leads Scotty into the bell tower, where his fear of heights prevents him from seeing what happens at the top. Elster plans to kill his wife and make it look like suicide: he pushes the real Madeleine off the bell tower, while Scotty thinks the hysterical woman took her own life.

When Scotty reunites with Judy after Madeleine’s death and discovers the truth through her necklace, he drives her to the same bell tower where Madeleine was killed. Scotty takes Judy to the summit to understand what exactly happened when Madeleine died, but Scotty’s acrophobia mixed with his anger makes him hysterical. When a nun approaches the two to investigate the noise, Judy mistakes the vague figure for a ghost and, in terror, recoils. She falls to her death, recreating the scream that will forever haunt the place.

What happened to Gavin Elster

He can never pay for what he did

Gavin Elster is the real villain of VertigoPlotting against his wife and one of his best friends. He hires Judy to impersonate Madeleine as someone who harbors dangerous secrets and is obsessed with the suicidal death of Carlotta Valdes. He contacts Scotty to follow her at all times, tricking him into falling for her fabricated secret affairs, using his friend’s acrophobia to substitute his wife’s fresh corpse in Madeleine’s apparent suicide.

Since Vertigo ends immediately after Judy’s death, It is left in the open whether Gavin Elster ever paid for crimes. Although Scotty survives in the end and discovers the whole truth, the only other witness who can prove Elster wrong is Judy. Furthermore, the nun who witnesses Judy and Scotty’s argument may also blame Scotty for Judy’s death, turning him into an unreliable witness for Elder’s crimes.

Why Vertigo has an alternate ending

It leaves things more open-ended

Officially, and famously, the last shot of the movie is of a horrified Scotty looking down from the top of the bell tower, but Vertigo Has an alternate ending that leaves room for more interpretation. In the version of the film released overseas, Vertigo Cut to Midge (Barbara Bell Gedes) listening carefully to A News report on the radio about the plans to extradite Gavin Elster from Europe to America Then Scottie walks in without a word, and the two share a drink while looking out the window.

Although the news report may push a closed ending too hard by revealing Elster’s fate, there is something about the silence that haunts the scene that makes it an ending just as effective. While the original version ends abruptly after Judy’s death, forcing viewers to draw their own conclusions, VertigoThe alternate ending offers more time for Scottie and his shock. It also provides Midge’s character with a proper conclusion, showing how she still supports Scottie after all that happened.

The true meaning of Vertigo’s ending

Love is ever so important

VertigoWhat tops all of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies is about finding love through sightseeing. It only takes fragments of a person to be in love with them, and Madeleine’s fragments can be found wherever Scotty goes; It overwhelms him. Scottie’s biggest mistake is failing to realize how impossible it is to truly know someone only through fragments, which causes the main problem of the ending: to replace Madeleine’s fragments with Judy’s true image, Scottie needs to give the perfect picture which was given to him before.

To overcome longing as his primary truth, Scotty must jump a cliff to the unpredictability of love, but his fear of heights prevents him from making up his mind in time. The beauty of VertigoIts suspenseful bell tower ending is how it forces the audience to contest every single thing they have seen. As the credits roll, it’s important to chew on not just the final moments of the movie but its full trajectory, dissecting what’s real and what’s not, what’s important and what’s just a trick.

How the Vertigo End is obtained

Vertigo was not a win for Hitchcock when it was released

Although it may seem surprising given Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy as a director, Vertigo Was not well received when it was first released in 1958. Critics and audiences alike did not warm to the movie, and the end was partly why. Many contemporary critics felt that the pacing of Vertigo was not satisfactory, and that the ending was not a worthy enough payoff when it arrived. what’s more, Hitchcock’s decision to reveal many of the integral parts of the mystery before the finale was seen as a jarring choice by many. This also has a direct impact on how the ending of Vertigo is received.

The moment when Judy falls to her death is shocking, and was acknowledged as such by many reviews in 1958. However, without a big reveal to pair it with (such as, for example, the reveal that Norman Bates impersonated his mother in Psycho), the sudden death of Judy felt off. At best, it was described as lacking substance, because the audience already knew the truth about Madeline. In the harshest reviews, it was labeled tacked-on for shock value, an attempt by Hitchcock to trade a worthwhile conclusion to the narrative for a moment of spectacle.

However, contemporary reviews of Vertigo In 1958 and how the movie has come to be seen in the decades since are vastly different. Especially after Hitchcock’s death in 1980, Vertigo has come to be seen as one of his best movies by many critics (although, For casual viewers and enthusiasts, titles like Psycho And the birds remain the highest rated). Many re-evaluations of Vertigo have focused less on the plot and more on the abstract tone and surreal, dreamlike quality of the movie.

Without the expectation for a big twist to join the rest of the plot, modern critics have responded to these Vertigo End much more warm. Although it is rarely listed as the best finale in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, it is also not rejected as it was in 1958 when Vertigo was released. The general consensus of the many retrospective reviews over the decade is that the end of Vertigo Works for the story, with little (if any) revisiting the film feeling that the Judy/Madeline reveal should have been saved for the climax.