“Vertigo” (めまい / Memai), Ultra-Rare Original First Japanese Release Movie Poster 1958, B2 Size (c. 51 × 73 cm) - Gallery

This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster printed for the first Japanese release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in 1958, starring James Stewart, Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes.

Vertigo opened theatrically in Japan on 26 October 1958, only five months after its American premiere. This is genuine Paramount first-release advertising paper, not the substantially later Japanese revival poster issued through CIC in 1984 or material from a subsequent restoration campaign.

Once received as an enigmatic and commercially restrained Hitchcock thriller, Vertigo has undergone one of the most profound critical reassessments in cinema history. It was voted the greatest film ever made in Sight & Sound’s 2012 critics’ poll and retained an extraordinary position at No. 2 in the expanded 2022 poll.

This poster is in excellent condition overall for an original Japanese theatrical sheet dating from 1958. It remains unbacked and retains its original period folds.

Design

This is one of the most beautiful and psychologically charged Japanese posters created for any Alfred Hitchcock film.

Where Saul Bass’s celebrated American campaign reduced Vertigo to spirals, silhouettes and disorientation, the Japanese first-release design approaches the film through romance, glamour and narrative montage. Yet beneath its apparent romanticism, the image is every bit as uneasy and obsessive as Hitchcock’s film.

An enormous, photo-illustrative close-up of Scottie Ferguson and Madeleine Elster dominates the sheet. James Stewart bends down from the left while Kim Novak reclines beneath him, her platinum-blonde hair, heavily defined eyes and brilliant red lips creating the immaculate artificial image that Scottie will later attempt to reconstruct.

The scale of the embrace is almost overwhelming. Stewart’s black-clad body consumes much of the lower-left composition, while Novak is tilted backwards into the image, suspended between surrender and vulnerability. What initially reads as a passionate kiss gradually feels more controlling and claustrophobic—an extraordinarily appropriate visualisation of a film concerned with obsession, possession and the remaking of a woman into an imagined ideal.

Behind them, San Francisco is transformed into a vivid mid-century dreamscape. The Golden Gate Bridge rises diagonally through the upper-right corner in saturated vermilion, set against turquoise water, pale sky and softly rendered hills.

Beneath the bridge appears a second, miniature image of Scottie carrying the apparently unconscious Madeleine after rescuing her from San Francisco Bay. The same couple therefore appears twice within the composition: first as a distant scene of apparent rescue and again as an immense foreground image of romantic fixation.

That doubling is especially effective for Vertigo, a film structured around repetition, false identity and the transformation of one image into another.

Alongside the smaller vignette is the original English studio billing:

PARAMOUNT PRESENTS
JAMES STEWART
KIM NOVAK
ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S “VERTIGO”

The brilliant red English title is echoed at the bottom by the much larger Japanese title:

「めまい」

Meaning “vertigo” or “dizziness,” the three characters are printed individually in scarlet-pink, green and lavender-purple. Against the deep black lower field, they appear almost to float independently from one another.

The colour choice is strikingly appropriate. Red and green are central to the film’s visual psychology—desire, memory and Madeleine’s spectral reappearance are repeatedly organised through colour—while the unexpected violet adds another note of chromatic instability.

Across the upper margin appears the original Japanese campaign line:

「美貌の人妻の不思議な行動を追って発展するロマンスとサスペンスの名篇!!」

“A masterpiece of romance and suspense unfolding through the pursuit of a beautiful married woman’s mysterious behaviour!”

The wording reveals precisely how Paramount introduced Vertigo to Japanese audiences in 1958. Rather than foregrounding Scottie’s acrophobia or the film’s increasingly disturbing examination of obsession, the campaign presented it as an exceptionally sophisticated fusion of romance, mystery and suspense.

At upper centre appears the period inscription:

「外国映画芸術祭作品」

—identifying the film as part of a contemporary foreign-film arts presentation.

At upper left, the poster prominently advertises Hitchcock’s technical presentation through the original:

VISTAVISION — MOTION PICTURE HIGH FIDELITY

Beneath it, 「総天然色」 announces the film in “full natural colour,” with the individual characters themselves printed in different colours. These details are not incidental: in 1958, VistaVision and full-colour presentation were major theatrical attractions, and the Japanese campaign made the richness and scale of Robert Burks’s San Francisco imagery a central selling point.

The bottom retains the period Japanese credits for James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, together with Hitchcock’s director credit and the original Paramount Pictures mountain emblem.

The result is a remarkable synthesis of Hollywood star photography, hand-retouched illustration, Japanese typography and mid-century colour advertising. It is considerably more pictorial than the American Saul Bass campaign, but no less distinctive.

Format note: Japanese B2 posters measure approximately 51 × 73 cm / 20 × 29 in and served as the principal single-sheet theatrical format in Japan.

Rarity

Although B2 was Japan’s standard theatrical poster size, standard format does not mean commonly surviving—particularly for imported films released in the 1950s.

These posters were functional cinema advertising. They were folded, transported, displayed, removed and usually discarded once the theatrical engagement ended. Very few people in 1958 treated them as objects that should be preserved for future film or design collections.

The passage of nearly seven decades has reduced the surviving population still further. Original Japanese posters from this period are frequently encountered with extensive fold separation, paper loss, staining, tape repairs, faded colour or permanent mounting to boards and backing materials.

This design is also sought internationally because it offers a completely different visual interpretation from the famous Saul Bass American poster. Auction specialists have described the Japanese B2 as a rare alternative whose deep colour and lush imagery capture the beauty, passion and intrigue of the film; surviving examples have appeared only intermittently at major poster auctions.

The market for Vertigo paper is unusually broad. It encompasses collectors of:

Alfred Hitchcock
James Stewart and Kim Novak
Saul Bass and mid-century design
classic Hollywood and psychological cinema
Japanese film advertising
and canonical works of world cinema

The combination of 1958 first-release provenance, rare Japanese artwork, original Paramount markings, strong colour and an unbacked state makes this a genuine grail-level poster for a serious Hitchcock collection.

Cult Status / Film Notes

Based on the novel D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, Vertigo follows retired San Francisco detective John “Scottie” Ferguson, who suffers from acrophobia after a traumatic rooftop accident.

Asked by an old acquaintance to follow his wife Madeleine, Scottie watches as she visits locations connected to a dead ancestor and appears increasingly possessed by the past. His professional surveillance becomes romantic fixation, and after tragedy intervenes, that fixation develops into an attempt to recreate the lost woman through someone else.

The film’s mystery ultimately becomes a disturbing investigation of the male gaze, erotic obsession, grief, performance and the violence involved in forcing reality to conform to an idealised image.

Hitchcock assembled one of the most important creative teams of his career. Robert Burks’s VistaVision cinematography gives San Francisco a dreamlike, unstable beauty; Bernard Herrmann’s score moves through recurring, circular phrases of yearning and dread; and Saul Bass’s title design transforms the spiral into the film’s defining visual symbol. The principal cast was led by James Stewart, Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes.

The film’s celebrated dolly-zoom effect—created by moving the camera while changing the focal length in the opposite direction—became so inseparable from the picture that it is now commonly known as the “Vertigo effect.”

Its critical ascent was gradual but extraordinary. After decades of analysis, restoration and rediscovery, Vertigo overtook Citizen Kane in 2012 to become the first new film in half a century to lead Sight & Sound’s critics’ poll. Ten years later it remained at No. 2, confirming rather than diminishing its place at the centre of the cinematic canon.

Few original film posters represent a title of comparable historical and critical stature.

Condition

Excellent condition overall for an original folded Japanese poster printed in 1958.

The colours remain impressively strong: the turquoise water and sky, vermilion Golden Gate Bridge, Novak’s blonde hair and vivid red, green and violet typography retain excellent saturation. The substantial black lower field remains deep and visually powerful, rather than appearing badly faded or extensively abraded.

The poster retains its original horizontal and vertical fold pattern, entirely consistent with period theatrical handling and distribution. The folds remain visible from both the front and reverse.

There is some fold wear and associated creasing, most noticeably around the central cross-fold area within the main kiss image. There are also localized stress marks and shallow creases along portions of the vertical and horizontal folds.

Additional condition points include:

minor edge and corner wear;
several small edge nicks;
a fine vertical stress line within the lower-right black field;
and minor wear along the lower edge.

The reverse shows the complete period fold structure, general age-related handling and light natural toning. A small pencil notation (58) is present toward the lower-left area of the verso.

Once professionally framed, this poster will display exceptionally well. Its vivid colour, enormous central image and deep black lower field retain tremendous visual impact, while the original folds form part of the history of an authentic Japanese theatrical survivor from 1958.

Please review all photographs carefully. They show the exact poster for sale, front and back, including detailed images of the folds, cross-fold wear, edges and reverse.

This is an ultra-rare original Japanese B2 theatrical poster from the 1958 first Japanese release of Vertigo.

It is not a reproduction, later reprint or 1984 Japanese revival poster.

It measures approximately 51 × 73 cm / 20 × 29 in.

It is approximately 68 years old.

Certificate of Authenticity included.