D'entre les morts

Release date:May 9, 1958

Directed by:Alfred Hitchcock

Rated:

Runtime:128 minutes

Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac. It is the story of a retired... police detective suffering from acrophobia who is hired as a private investigator to follow the wife of an acquaintance to uncover the mystery of her peculiar behavior. The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered acclaim since and is now often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career, appearing repeatedly in best films polls by the American Film Institute. After a rooftop chase in which his latent acrophobia results in the death of a police officer, San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson retires, spending much of his time with his ex-fiancée Midge Wood. Scottie tries to gradually conquer his fear but Midge suggests another severe emotional shock might be the only cure. An acquaintance, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to tail his wife, Madeleine, claiming she has been possessed; Scottie reluctantly agrees.
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Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalises crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from... mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred. It has several sub-genres, including detective fiction , legal thriller, courtroom drama and hard-boiled fiction. While the archetype for a murder mystery dates back to "The Three Apples" in the One Thousand and One Nights, crime fiction began to be considered as a serious genre only around 1900. The earliest known crime novel is "The Rector of Veilbye" by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher, published in 1829. Better known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe , " The Mystery of Marie Roget " , and "The Purloined Letter" . Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Woman in White was published in 1860, while The Moonstone is often thought to be his masterpiece. French author Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq laid the groundwork for the methodical, scientifically minded detective.
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