Blond Obsession

Rating: 7/10 (8 February 2008)

****SPOILERS**** Chasing a burglar across a San Francisco rooftop Det. John "Scottie" Ferguson, James Stewart, lost his footing and ended up hanging on for dear life on a roof drainpipe. With his partner SFPD officer Fred Graham desperately trying to save Scottie he slips and falls to his death on the street some ten floors below. It's after that traumatic experience Scottie developed a sever case of acute acrophobia or vertigo, fear of heights, that had him put in his papers and retire from the San Francisco Police Department.
Not working with nothing really to do with his time but chit-chat with his ex-fiancée artist Midge Wood, Barbara Bel Gredds, Scottie is delighted to be contacted by an old friend Calvin Elster, Tom Helmore. Elster is a big shipping operator on the San Francisco docks who want's Scottie to do a "job" for him. The "job" Elster wants is for Scottie to shadow his somewhat whacked out, but gorgeous,wife icy blond Medeleine, Kim Novak. Medeleine it turns out has gone completely off the deep end with her thinking that she's actually, or the reincarnation of, Corlotta Veldes. Corletta who killed herself at the age of 26 in 1857 was the same age that Medeleine is now in 1957! Elster feels that his wife is on the road to do the same thing that Corltta did a century ago; commit suicide!
As soon as Scottie laid his eyes on the super sexy Medeleine his heart ended up stuck in his throat. Mesmerized by her beauty Scottie helplessly falls heads over heels for Medeleine despite the fact she's not only married but married to his friend and the person who hired Scottie to follow her Gavin Elster!
This somewhat ticklish and uncomfortable situation gets even stranger when Scottie is forced to blow his cover in rescuing Medeleine when she, without warning, jumps into San Francisco Bay just under the Golden Gate Bridge! Having Medeleine dry out at his apartment Scottie, seeing her up close and personal, becomes completely nuts over Medeleine! Within minutes Scottie is more then willing to commit sin, having an affair with a married woman, and steal Medeleine away from his best friend Gavin Elster! The same guy who hired Scottie to look after Medeleine and keep her, like she just tried, from killing herself!
***SPOILER ALERT FROM THIS POINT ON*** Things get even stranger for Scottie when Medeleine does what he was hired by her husband to prevent her from doing commit suicide. This happens when Medeleine in what seems like a panic attack runs up the steps of the bell-tower of an old Spanish abbey, when Corlotta did herself in back in 1857, and jumped to her death! With Scottie unable to save Medeleine, due to his fear of heights, he now goes into a deep depression in that he holds himself responsible for not only his police partners, Fred Graham, but his lovers, Medeleine Elster, death as well.
Cleared by a court of inquiry in Medeleine tragic suicide Scottie, still holding himself responsible, becomes almost a recluse to his friends, which are very few, as well as society at large. Walking the streets of San Franisco aimlessly one day Scottie sees this pretty read-head, Judy Barton, who eerily looks exactly, with the exception of her hair color, like his departed lover Medeleine Elster!
The not that surprise of a surprise ending in "Vertigo" has Scottie, who by then had put all the missing pieces together, screw up big time by blowing his chance to renew his love affair, through Judy Barton, with the late Medeleine Elster. Obsessed to the point of being arrested and put in a mental ward for both observation and preventing him from both hurting himself or anybody else Scottie really loses it in the end.
The bad news in the movie is that Scottie loses his chance to put his past behind him in what he did, or thought he did, in having Medeleine driven to kill herself. The good news is that Scottie in his mindless actions at the end of the movie did in fact put himself through his own kind of unique and very needed "Shock Treatment". It was that self administrated "Shock Treatment" what in the end finally cured Scottie of his Vertigo!