Considered one of the greatest films of all time, Alfred Hitchcock’s magnum opus, topped Citizen Kane as the best ever in a 2012 Sight and Sound poll.
Vertigo is a psychological thriller starring James Stewart as a former San Francisco police detective who is recently retired.
He left the force after an incident on the job which caused him to develop vertigo.
But now he’s been hired as a private investigator to report on the strange behaviour of a man’s wife played by Kim Novak.
The 1958 film is particularly iconic because it was the first movie to use the dolly zoom, which is an in-camera effect that distorts and undermines regular visual perception.
In Vertigo, the dolly zoom is used to convey Stewart’s character’s acrophobia, the extreme fear of heights.
The Hitchcock shot would later be used by Steven Spielberg for the iconic Get Out Of The Water scene in Jaws.
Vertigo is streaming now on ITVX.
