Vertigo

Agent ‘Scotty’ Ferguson (Stewart) has nothing to do after being suspended by the San Francisco police department due to extreme vertigo. With time on his hands, he starts helping out an old friend. His wife Madeleine (Novak) has been acting strangely, Scotty shadows her. The former cop proves obsessed with the blonde he follows.

In Vertigo, Hitchcock plays an ingenious game with appearances and reality; is what audiences see Scotty’s observations or are they his imagination? The film harvested little praise upon release, but is now seen as one of the very best Hitchcock films, particularly due to the camerawork, the music and the sensual use of colour.

Bernard Hermann’s score is famous for the way it represents the leading man’s confused state of mind. In its once-a-decade poll, the film magazine Sight and Sound announced Vertigo as the best film of all time in 2012.

Preceding the screening, at 19:45, a lecture by Basje Boer about Vertigo, the male gaze, the role of the victim and female archetypes in films, to mark the launch of her new book Pose. Separate tickets will be sold for this.