10 Movie Scenes That Will Give You Vertigo

Hitchcock created several anxiety-inducing scenes set at dangerous heights in his films, including a notable terrifying scene hanging off the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur, but his most frightening work in this area is still the aptly named Vertigo.

The film opens during a rooftop pursuit which causes San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) to retire after he is traumatised and develops an incapacitating fear of heights. During the chase he falls of the roof, barely catching himself on the gutter and a fellow police officer falls to his death while trying to save him.

The scene was famously so effective because of the dolly zoom camera effect created by Irmin Roberts, a cameraman on the film. By zooming in the camera lens while simultaneously moving the camera away from Scottie it had the effect of keeping him the same size throughout the shot but undermining normal visual perception by making the background grow in size and detail, overwhelming the foreground.

This perspective change is highly unsettling and a fantastic and ingenious way to recreate the feeling of vertigo. It has been copied numerous times since, most famously in Jaws, but others include Goodfellas and the Lord of the Rings films.