Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Vertigo trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Vertigo flopped politely in 1958, vanished from cinemas for years, and then in 2012 knocked Citizen Kane off the top of the Sight & Sound poll. This quiz covers the whole strange arc of Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco obsession: the Boileau-Narcejac novel, Vera Miles's pregnancy and Kim Novak's casting, the invented character of Midge, Carlotta Valdes and her portrait, Fort Point, the missing bell tower at Mission San Juan Bautista, the redwoods that were not Muir Woods, and Judy's green-lit room at the Empire Hotel. The craft questions dig into the dolly zoom and the uncredited cameraman who devised it, Bernard Herrmann's Wagner-soaked score recorded in London during a strike, Saul Bass's spirals, John Whitney's anti-aircraft-computer titles, Edith Head's colour scheme, the alternative ending, the 1983 reissue and the argued-over 1996 restoration. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen the film once; the expert tier is for people who know Scottie's street address. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, Kim Novak, the source novel, Bernard Herrmann and the dolly zoom, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. For the director's whole career, try our Alfred Hitchcock quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what year was Hitchcock's Vertigo released?
1958
It arrived between The Wrong Man and North by Northwest, and was only a modest earner on first release.
Q 02Who plays retired detective John 'Scottie' Ferguson?
James Stewart
Hitchcock later blamed the film's soft box office on the 49-year-old star looking too old opposite a 24-year-old leading lady.
Q 03Vertigo was adapted from a 1954 French novel by which writing duo?
Boileau-Narcejac
Hitchcock had wanted their earlier book too, but Henri-Georges Clouzot got it and made Les Diaboliques.
Q 04What was the English title of the source novel D'entre les morts on its 1956 translation?
The Living and the Dead
Paramount had commissioned a synopsis in 1954, before any English edition existed.
Q 05Which Paramount second-unit cameraman actually devised the dolly zoom for Vertigo?
Irmin Roberts
He went uncredited; the shot has since turned up in Goodfellas and The Lord of the Rings.
Q 06How was the famous vertiginous shot down the bell shaft actually filmed?
Horizontally, using a scale model
Shooting it on a full-sized set proved too hard, so a miniature was built and laid on its side.
Q 07Kim Novak's character(s) go by which two names?
Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton
Judy claims to be from Salina, Kansas; the other options are Hitchcock heroines from different films.
Q 08Who was originally cast as Madeleine before withdrawing because she became pregnant?
Vera Miles
She had even modelled for an early version of the Carlotta portrait; Hitchcock refused to delay and hired Kim Novak.
Q 09Which college acquaintance hires Scottie to follow his wife?
Gavin Elster
He uses Scottie's fear of heights to pass off his murdered wife's fall as suicide.
Q 10Madeleine appears to be possessed by the spirit of which long-dead woman?
Carlotta Valdes
In the novel the equivalent ghost is Pauline Lagerlac; Carlotta died in 1857 after a rich man kept her child and cast her aside.
Q 11At which real California site does Madeleine fall from the bell tower?
Mission San Juan Bautista
The tower had been torn down for dry rot before filming, so it was matted in with a painting; Hitchcock was reportedly annoyed to find it gone.
Q 12Where does Madeleine jump into the bay?
Fort Point, under the Golden Gate Bridge
Scottie dives in and hauls her out, and the next day she brings him a letter of thanks.
Q 13Where does Scottie first see the Portrait of Carlotta?
Q 21Which Wagner opera does Vertigo's score extensively reference?
Tristan und Isolde
Critic Alex Ross notes the music, like the film, is built around spirals and circles.
Q 22Which graphic designer created Vertigo's spiral-themed title sequence and poster?
Saul Bass
He went on to design the titles for North by Northwest and Psycho.
Q 23The rotating patterns in the titles were animated by John Whitney using what device?
A World War II anti-aircraft predictor
The Kerrison Predictor let him plot animated Lissajous curves years before computer graphics.
California Palace of the Legion of Honor
The portrait itself was later lost after removal from the gallery.
Q 14The redwood grove Scottie and Madeleine visit is presented as Muir Woods. Where was it really filmed?
Big Basin Redwoods State Park
The cutaway showing the tree's age was copied from a real display that is still at Muir Woods.
Q 15Why did the writers have to place the Valdes grave at Mission Dolores?
All other cemeteries had been evicted from San Francisco in 1912
The prop headstone was left behind at the mission after filming.
Q 16Ernie's, where Scottie first sees Madeleine, was a real restaurant in which San Francisco area?
Jackson Square
It stood at 847 Montgomery Street, about a mile from Scottie's apartment; the Empire Hotel on Sutter Street was also real.
Q 17What is the address of Scottie's apartment, one block down from the 'crookedest' road in the world?
900 Lombard Street
The Brocklebank at 1000 Mason is Elster's building; 940 Sutter is the Empire Hotel and 847 Montgomery was Ernie's restaurant.
Q 18Where does Hitchcock make his cameo in Vertigo?
Walking past Elster's shipyard with a trumpet case
The shipyard scenes used an old San Francisco ironworks, by then owned by Bethlehem Steel.
Q 19Who composed Vertigo's score, often called his masterpiece?
Bernard Herrmann
He scored nine Hitchcock films in all, from The Trouble with Harry to Marnie.
Q 20Why was Vertigo's score recorded in London and Vienna rather than Hollywood?
A musicians' strike in the United States
Muir Mathieson conducted; the music leans heavily on a Wagner opera about doomed lovers.
Q 24Which costume designer worked with Hitchcock on Vertigo's colour-coded wardrobe?
Edith Head
Madeleine's famous grey suit and the pervasive greens were part of the scheme.
Q 25Vertigo's alternative ending shows Scottie's ex-fiancée listening to a radio report about what?
The pursuit of Gavin Elster across Europe
It was demanded by the Production Code office, not foreign censors, and resurfaced in 1993 for home video.
Q 26What was Vertigo's working title during production?
From Among the Dead
Maxwell Anderson's rejected first screenplay had been titled Darkling, I Listen, from Keats.
Q 27Maxwell Anderson's rejected screenplay had a title taken from which Keats poem?
Ode to a Nightingale
'Darkling, I listen' is a line from the poem's sixth stanza.
Q 28Roughly what did Vertigo cost to make?
About $2.5 million
It earned $3.2 million in North American rentals, breaking even but lagging Hitchcock's other hits.
Q 29In which poll did Vertigo replace Citizen Kane as the greatest film ever made in 2012?
Sight & Sound
It had not even made the top ten in 1962 or 1972; in 2022 it slipped to second behind Jeanne Dielman.
Q 30Which film pushed Vertigo into second place in the 2022 edition of the same critics' poll?
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Chantal Akerman's 1975 film became the first directed by a woman to top the poll.