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An ESL / EFL Online Gap-Fill Quiz on Vertigo

Vertigo is a 1958 psychological directed by Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, on the 1954 novel “D'entre les morts”. It is the story of a retired police detective suffering from acrophobia who is hired as a private investigator to follow the wife of an acquaintance to uncover the of her peculiar behaviour. It is often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining of his career. In 2012, it was voted as the best movie ever by the British Film Institute, which said the movie was great even though it didn’t “use cinema's arsenal of effects to make a statement”.

Vertigo premiered in San Francisco in May 1958 at the Stage Door Theater. Its performance at the box was average and reviews were mixed. Variety said the film showed Hitchcock's "", but was too long and slow for "what is basically only a psychological murder ”. Similarly, the Los Angeles Times admired the , but found the plot "too long" and felt it "bogs down" in "a maze of detail". However, the Los Angeles Examiner loved it, admiring the "excitement, action, , glamor and [the] crazy, off-beat love story". New York Times film Bosley Crowther also gave Vertigo a review by explaining that "[the] secret [of the film] is so clever, even though it is devilishly far-."