Watch it at Amazon
WARNING: Parents guides typically contain spoilers. VERTIGO, in particular, contains many surprises, which this guide may reveal.There is no sex or nudity. There is passionate kissing. It is implied that the two main characters sleep together out of wedlock. (The man is unmarried; the woman is--or seems to be--his friend's wife.)Early in the film, Scottie (the protagonist) removes the wet clothes from an unconscious Madeleine (the female lead) after saving her from a near-drowning. This occurs off screen, and there's no real suggestion that he took advantage of her. (In fact, it is later revealed that she hadn't been unconscious after all.) We do see her wake up naked in his bed. But she is covered in blankets (that is, her nudity is hidden from our eyes); and Scottie is not in bed with her.The protagonist's obsession with a dead woman makes his actions in the second half of the film seem necrophilic. But this perversion is never made explicit.
The violence is not explicit. There is no gore.In the opening scene, we see a policeman fall to his death from a rooftop, while a police detective (the protagonist) hangs by a gutter, barely escaping his own fall.Madeleine (the female lead) attempts suicide by jumping into San Francisco Bay. Later, she successfully kills herself by jumping from a tower. (But it turns out that the attempt at suicide was faked and the successful suicide was really a homicide.)Again, the violence of these scenes is in no way explicit.
None.
Early in the film, Scottie (the protagonist) makes a joking reference to drowning his troubles in alcohol. As the film progresses, there is an unstressed suggestion that he really does.
At the opening of the movie, we see a woman's eye with a swirling vortex in the pupil.In the opening scene, we see a policeman fall to his death from a rooftop, while a police detective (the protagonist) hangs by a gutter, barely escaping his own fall. We never find out how the detective was saved, a bit of ambiguity a child could find troubling.We see (or seem to see) a suicide attempt, a suicide and two accidental deaths by falling. The protagonist's vertigo is caused by acrophobia, a fear that the viewer is drawn to identify with and feel. We "see" the protagonist's vertigo from his point of view--this is accomplished with a disorienting camera trick that could be frightening.The female lead seems to be going mad. Later, the protagonist does go mad after a nightmare about falling; at one point he falls into his own grave.The male and female lead are having a passionate verbal fight. In the end the woman is scared by the appearance of a nun and falls to her death from the bell tower.
