Evaluation of "Vertigo" opening

This is the opening rooftop chase scene of "Vertigo" directed by Alfred Hitchcock.



This is my evalutaion..
Straight away Hitchcock manages to grasp our attention by the menacing non-diegetic soundtrack music that evokes fast paced movement. Then the first shot of a close up of just the ladder, when two hands appear grabbing it from below.

Already enigma is established and we are asking ourselves questions even in the first 10 seconds of the film. As the camera then zooms out of this shot, we see that in the background there is a city, immediately establishing the character must be on some kind of roof. This person is immediately followed by a man in a policeman uniform; this then answers some of our questions but not all of them and so keeps us interested. Another man appears after the officer wearing a suit, looking well kept and a little awkward as he jumps over the step making us think he’s perhaps not that comfortable to be where he is which could give us a clue as to what will happen.


The next shot is a great tracking establishing shot of the three characters running across the roof tops. Now we can clearly see that it’s dark which sets a moody and quite ominous tone to the scene. There is no diegetic sound apart from when the police man fires the gun at the man he is chasing which begs the question what could this man have done that so bad that he deserves to be shot at instead of just chased down and put in jail? It also leads you to believe something bad will happen and builds up the tension to the inevitable breaking point where something unwanted happens. Tension is also built up in the next shot when it cuts to a very long shot of each man individually trying to jump a gap in the roof onto an unsteady, slanted rooftop. The first man makes it alright, then the officer just about makes it, each time the music growing more dramatic to increase tension and giving you another clue that something is about to happen.



Suddenly, the last man jumps and fails to make it. He slips, falls and there is a four shot sequence of him falling to we completely focus on it, each time gets closer and more involved in what’s going on. The first is the same very long shot of him the jumping the other two characters had except we see him start to slip, the second is a long shot of him struggling for his life trying to get back to grips with the roof, the third is a medium shot of him clinging on to a drainpipe on the edge of the building, and the fourth is a medium close up of his face while holding on for his life. We see the sweat dripping off his face, accentuating his fear and making it all the more real for us. The music also becomes more threatening and dramatic as this happens. This cuts to a medium shot of the police officer running after the first character, he abandons the pursuit and goes back to help his colleague. In doing so he creates an image for himself of being a nice man, and this makes the end part all the more terrible. Suddenly the subject of the chase has changed and now it’s a rescue mission. Having more than one thing happen in the beginning scene is ingenious of Hitchcock to rope the audience in and get them hooked as things are always changing.

We then cut to a close up shot of the third characters face and the look of sheer terror on it. An eyeline match allows us to see what he’s seeing and an establishing shot of the ground below clearly shows this. As the officer tries to help the man, he falls to his death with a shrill, haunting scream. Again we are surprised as initial thoughts could have been the third character was going to fall.

Hitchcock was named the ‘master if suspense’ in his day for his elusive techniques and long effective shots. He will definitely be influencing me in my own work.