"Vertigo" is a 1958 American psychological thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart as former police detective John "Scottie" Ferguson who is forced into early retirement because of an incident that caused him to develop acrophobia (an extreme fear of heights) and vertigo (a sensation of false, rotational movement).

The film was shot on location in San Francisco, California, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. It is the first film to utilize the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie's acrophobia. As a result of its use in this film, the effect is often referred to as "the Vertigo effect".
The scene in which Madeleine falls from the tower was filmed at Mission San Juan Bautista. Hitchcock used the effect to look down the tower shaft to emphasise its height and Scottie's disorientation. Following difficulties filming the shot on a full-sized set, a model of the tower shaft was constructed, and the dolly zoom was filmed horizontally.

The score was written by Bernard Herrmann and conducted by Muir Mathieson. It was recorded in Europe because there was a musicians' strike in the U.S.at the time. In a 2004 interview with "Sight and Sound," a publication of the British Film Indstry, Martin Scorsese described the qualities of Herrmann's famous score: "Hitchcock's film is about obsession, which means that it's about circling back to the same moment, again and again ... And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfillment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for — he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession."

In 2005 the American Film Institute ranked Herrman's scores respectively for "Psycho" and "Vertigo" #4 and #12 on their list of the 25 greatest film scores. 7 of his other scores were also nominated for the list.