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The Conversation
The Conversation
Susan Kerrigan, Professor Film and Television, Swinburne University of Technology

How Hitchcock’s Vertigo gave us the dolly zoom – one of cinema’s trippiest visual effects

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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.

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