Vertigo (1958, Paramount, dir. Alfred Hitchcock), is still one of the greatest films ever made. Shot in VistaVision it looks sharp when remastered today, and provides a mesmerizing score by Bernard Herrmann. (Pedro Almodovar borrowed from this style in his recent Bad Education.)
The screenwriters are Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor. The film is based on the French novel 'D'entre les morts' ('The Living and the Dead') by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.
The music score by Bernard Herrmann is legendary (as it was also with 'Psycho').
The film was originally released in VistaVision (and Technicolor) and has had some remasterings and re-releases as well as DVD sets from Paramount.
In an opening shot, Det. Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is confronted with his fear of heights in a chase, and then the film settles to an opening exposition in a long conversation in an office (where he reveals his need to reture), a scriptwriting style not favored today.
Soon an old friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) hires him to spy on his wife Madelaine (Kin Novak) and we are off on a romantic adventure in 50s San Francisco, which becomes increasingly layered and complex with twists and turns (and double or mistaken identities—when is a beloved just a fantasy?), leading twice to the famous belfry tower scene in the Coast Mountains. The staircase shot is famous and often used today by other scriptwriters as a reference point.
The plot is bifucated, in that there is a jump suicide death in the film's middle, which gives the film a distinct second half, Op. 111 style. We gradually learn that Madelaine and Judy are the same (as in the original painting). This is a plot idea that is usually very hard to pull off in screenwriting.
There is also 'Obsessed with Vertigo' (1997, Universal, dir. Harrison).