In one scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, lead character John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) is shown following Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) up a bell tower.
Scottie is afraid of heights. So when he briefly stops and glances down, he experiences a wave of vertigo. The stairwell distorts, seemingly stretching into the distance below him – a potent reflection of his dizzy and panicked state.