The screenplay is credited to Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, but Alec Coppel didn't write a word of the final draft. He is credited for contractual reasons only. Samuel A. Taylor read neither Alec Coppel's script nor the original novel, he worked solely from Alfred Hitchcock's outline of the story.
The word "vertigo" is only spoken once in the movie, towards the beginning by Scottie to Midge. After that it is never uttered again.
The zoom out/track in shots were done with miniatures laid on their sides, since it was impossible to do them vertically.
Uncredited second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts invented the famous "zoom out and track in" shot (now sometimes called "contra-zoom" or "trombone shot") to convey the sense of vertigo to the audience. The view down the mission stairwell cost $19,000 for just a couple of seconds of screen time.
Visa d'exploitation en France #21096
Voted #2 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (November 2005).
Was voted the 19th Greatest Film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
When Kim Novak questioned Alfred Hitchcock about her motivation in a particular scene, the director is said to have answered, "Kim, it's only a movie!"
When Hitchcock's wife, Alma, saw the film, she said that she liked it, except for one shot where Kim Novak walks towards the San Francisco Bay, which she felt made Novak look too large on the screen. For years afterward, when discussing this film, Hitchcock would insist that Alma hated this film.
When this movie opened at San Francisco's legendary Castro Theater during its restored re-release in October of 1997 (only a few months after the death of star James Stewart), it did more business there than any other theater in the US that weekend.