Daily Dialogue — January 2, 2020

“Give me your hand! Give me your hand!”

— Vertigo (1958), screenplay by Alec Coppel & Samuel A. Taylor, novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Rooftop.

Trivia: The screenplay is credited to Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, but Coppel didn’t write a word of the final draft. He is credited for contractual reasons only. Taylor read neither Coppel’s script nor the original novel. He worked solely from Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s outline of the story.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The opening rooftop scene in Vertigo is not just about Scottie (James Stewart) dangling from the rain gutter. The trauma he experiences is multiplied in intensity by the death of the police office who had attempted to save Scottie.