The title of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) characterizes the film quite well, for the director attempts not only to use the idea of vertigo, or dizziness in this case brought about by a fear of heights, as a driving force in the plot but also creates a sense of vertigo for the audience and further uses vertigo as a metaphor for action of the film. Every element of the film is shaped toward this end, all centered on the fact that the main character, Scotty, has this psychological problem which manifests itself in the physical feeling of dizziness.
The opening sequence is the key to all that follows, and it is especially important that Scotty is visually left dangling from a roof at the end of this sequence. He is, of course, rescued, but the rescue is not shown, and in a Hitchcock film what is not shown can be as important as what is. Scotty at this point has learned that he has vertigo, and another police officer has died because of it. Scotty is left hanging from the side of a building, unable to move or help himself. He will remain in this state metaphorically through the rest of the film, until the very end. The first thing we see in the film is a bar across the frame, and hands reach up and grasp it the way a drowning man might grasp the side of a boat. This bar seems to represent stability, but the human action taking place around it is anything but stable as the police chase a man across the roofs of San Francisco. Scotty is one of the two policemen chasing the suspect, who leaps across a chasm between two buildings to get away. When Scotty tries the same leap, he ends up hanging and experiencing his first bout of vertigo. As noted, he is left hanging because we do not see him rescued.
At the same time, it becomes apparent as the film progresses that in some respects Scotty has always been dangling in his life. His relationship with Midge, more like a mother than a girl friend, is one aspect of this. He i...