Vertigo Opening Analysis:

       For Our Media film analysis, we have been asked to analyse a Saul Bass thriller title sequence opening. The film I have chosen to analyse is Vertigo, a famous 1958 Thriller by Alfred Hitchcock. From studying the opening of the film, I think the title sequence is good as it makes the audience feel disillusioned; it gives us a sense of dizziness. The strange ambient backing track adds to the lexical field of suspense and disorientation, leaving the viewer wondering what is going to happen.

       The opening begins with an extreme CU of the bottom half of a womans face in black and white (the audience does not see anything before this, and is left puzzled to what is happening and who this person is).  The Camera then swings around from the right to the centre of her face, keeping the extreme CU shot and zooming into her darkly coloured lips. The camera is then tilted upwards to focus on her eyes as she looks to both sides. Notice that she does not blink, this also adds to the tension and suspense. There is then a zoom in to her left eye and her eye then widens, also as the camera zooms in the colour changes from black and white to a blood red colour, this increases suspense as the colour of the red, is adding to the connotation value of blood.

       After the zoom in of the eye, a rotating, spinning, spiral appears from the centre of the eye, enlarging after every rotation keeping the same circular shape of the eye (Iris wipe). This is clever of Alfred as it shows he has thought about his opening; (the word vertigo refers to dizziness, where there is feeling of motion when one is stationary) he has incorporated the meaning of vertigo by adding the spirals and disorientating images, focusing on the dizziness referred to the word Vertigo, and using it as his opening giving the sequence a lexical field of disillusion. This also adds to the denotation meaning, as the audience then associates the symbol of the spiral and dizziness to the word Vertigo.  The spiral images continues leaving the audience waiting in suspense wondering what is going to happen, leaving them puzzled to question themselves. The last spiral then focuses back to the eye, and the blood red colour, rotating to the shape of the eye. The scene then fades into blackness, leaving the audience wanting to watch on. 

 

( Image taken from - www.google.co.uk/images )