Effective suspense builds anticipation and heightens curiosity. Hitchcock achieves results through techniques such as visual effects and music. Filmic techniques include close ups, long shots, camera panning, montage (how a sequence of shots is selected to make up a scene) and cuts.

Suspense is achieved by a number of techniques in Vertigo. The sections below exemplify a range of these ways.

A. Visual effects

➤ Shapes and vertigo: shapes revolve in the opening sequence, suggesting the idea of vertigo or suffering from dizziness. The viewer might ask how the film is about vertigo, and what is going to happen.

➤ Nightmare sequence: after Scottie witnesses the fall of a woman from the tower in the Spanish Mission, he is traumatised. He believes that Madeleine has killed herself and he is responsible. He has a nightmare in which confusing and unexplained aspects of his investigation, presented in the form of montage, are seen, for example:

● the portrait of Carlotta Valdes.

● the flowers she holds in that picture, which shatter.

● shots of his own frightened face approaching the viewer.

When Scottie wakes up sweating, viewers might ask what it all means and what will happen next to Scottie.

➤ Colour: Hitchcock uses colour carefuly: for example,

● Judy's grey dress was a striking feature of how Scottie remembered Elster's supposed wife. It continues to feature as Scottie tries to recreate the woman he loved with exactly the same dress colour. This raises the question of whether the two women are the same.

● Judy seems to Scottie to be an apparition when she comes out of the bathroom dressed as he wanted. The grey-green surrounds of the image place her as a haunting figure.

B. Music: Bernard Hermann's score accompanies much of the action, for example:

➤ racing, thrilling music: the opening rooftop chase.

➤ an alarming blast, as Scottie dangles from the roof and sees the ground far away. There is a moment when the audience is in suspense: will he fall or faint?

➤ a suspenseful strumming on strings: Scottie dreams of jigsaw pieces he cannot connect.

➤ jerky and frightening music: Judy begins her run up the tower in the Spanish Mission, with Scottie in pursuit. Will the woman kill herself?

➤ a persistent tense beat: suggesting inevitable progress towards a goal as Scottie follows Judy driving in the city.

C. Filmic techniques: a range of these add to suspense.

➤ Long shots of Judy (impersonating Madeleine) emphasise Scottie's voyeuristic viewpoint as he spies on her, wondering what she is doing

● in the graveyard, where she visits a grave.

● sitting opposite Carlotta's portrait in the art gallery.

➤ Point of view (POV) shots, mostly from Scottie's point of view and focusing on Madeleine, reinforcing his obsession and his limited perspective on what's happening. For example,

● the car scenes, which alternate between frontal shots of Scottie at the wheel and his observation of where Madeleine's car is going.

● Scottie looking from the darkness in the rear of the shop to see Judy walking around the flower store. Curiosity about her is heightened.

● in the first Mission scene, Scottie runs after Judy on the stairwell and looks down to the ground at several turns as he gets higher. Dolly zoom shots are used to show his POV looking down, emphasising his vertigo.

➤ Close-ups: with these we see some things and not others, and curiosity can be heightened about the wider context.

● Vertigo starts with a number of dramatic close-ups of a woman's face under a range of colours. Her eyes move from side to side. This suggests mystery and invites a feeling of suspense.

● The opening shot of the rooftop chase shows a hand gripping a bar to discordant music. This gives suspense until the more distant takes establish more context for the action.

➤ Editing cuts

● a series of shots is presented when Scottie and Judy walk in a forest with ancient trees. Scottie (frontal shot of him) watches Judy as she walks away from him (shot of Judy from the back); she seems, for a suspenseful moment to disappear behind a tree. He is then framed again looking puzzled. He follows, but then she is framed in another shot resting against, perhaps, another tree.

● Scottie several times thinks he sees the Madeleine when lookalikes appear. These scenes prepare for the encounter with a woman he sees on the street with friends (actually Judy herself, pretending to be someone else). The camera switches between Scottie in a mid-distance shot and a side-on close-up of the supposed lookalike talking to friend then his face as he watches her go off down the street.

➤ Parallel scenes

● On two occasions, Judy appears after opening a hotel window, first at Kittrick's Hotel, from which she mysteriously disappears, and second in the Empire Hotel. Both shots show her framed in the window for a second, suggesting that this woman resembles Judy in more ways than one. The audience is kept in suspense about her actual identity.

● In the second Mission scene, which recalls the first long chase up the stairwell, we note that now Scottie can make it to the top of the tower, i.e. he has overcome his fear of heights.

The question challenges candidates to place themselves in Judy's very difficult position after Scottie visits and dates her in her hotel. He is fascinated and overcome by her 'resemblance' to the woman he thinks has killed herself. Answers will consider the letter she writes and destroys: it touches on the conflict inside her between confessing to Scottie that she has deceived him and helped Gavin Elster to kill his wife, and putting herself at risk of arrest for the murder. Some reflection will be needed about why Judy wrote and tore up the letter.

Candidates need to demonstrate a good knowledge of events in the film, no matter what feelings are expressed in diary. The entry might

➤ confess that she feels a victim of manipulation by Elster, whom she loved before he left her and escaped. She now sees Scottie as his victim too.

➤ make a statement about the pressure she feels now Scottie has found her.

➤ comment on her difficulty in convincing him she was someone else-even to the point of showing a supposed stranger her identity documents.

➤ say why she decided after all to accept his invitation to dinner.

➤ comment on Scottie's unhappy appearance when in her room, and how she felt about that.

➤ remark that she never really felt threatened by having him in her room.

➤ describe her conscience, knowing she was deceiving him as well as being an accomplice in a murder.

➤ emphasise that she loves Scottie and sees him as someone she might trust with her story, if she can appeal to his pity or sympathy, given that they both said they love each other at the Spanish Mission before she ran up the steps there.

➤ express uncertainty about his possible reaction to the truth, and explain that is why she tore up her letter.