Classical Vertigo

As Classical Vertigo demonstrates, the ancient gods and heroes live on in our stories and are as inescapable as fate itself. Mark Padilla does for Hitchcock's masterpiece what Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth does for the modern imagination. --Joel Gunz, HitchCon International Alfred Hitchcock Conference Vertigo, a film very much about the weight and ever-presence of the past, is a perfect focal point for the latest volume in Mark Padilla's ongoing examination of classical elements in Hitchcock's films, elements that are both ancient and sempervirens. In this book, Padilla shows in great detail how classical Western mythology lives on in the characters, plots, settings, and artifacts of what is often described as Hitchcock's most important film. Padilla demonstrates how there is a vibrant tradition bolstering the individual talent of Hitchcock, and that the resonance of Vertigo is collaborative and cumulative: behind it lie Georges Rodenbach, Boileau and Narcejac, Maxwell Anderson, Alec Coppel, and Samuel Taylor, among others, who contributed to linking Judy, Madeleine, Scottie, Midge, and Elster with Orpheus, Eurydice, Prometheus, Pandora, Pygmalion, Galatea, and Medea, among others, whose stories are both theirs and ours. --Sidney Gottlieb, Sacred Heart University