Blog Directory CineVerse: Hitchcock upends our equilibrium with a film that's challenging to diagnose

Hitchcock upends our equilibrium with a film that's challenging to diagnose

Thursday, September 8, 2016

"Vertigo" is a movie that wasn't an instant crowd pleaser or a boxoffice smash when it was released in 1958. And 58 years later, it's a film that can still make your head swim with its convolutions, improbabilities, prolonged pace and complicated character motivations. But it's these thick layers of intricacy that give shape and psychological complexity to a film built around a flimsy and disposable murder mystery conceit. For these and other reasons that reward repeat viewings, "Vertigo" is a cherished gem--granted, one that requires a careful look through the jeweler's glass to recognize and admire its fine facets--studied the world over and regarded as one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Countless tomes, essays, and dissertations have been exhaustively written about this Hitchcock work, and a 51-minute discussion of it during CineVerse can only begin to scratch the surface. Nevertheless, here's a summary of the major "Vertigo" talking points we discussed yesterday:

WHAT ARE THE THEMES AT WORK IN THIS FILM? WHAT IS THIS MOVIE ABOUT PSCYHOLOGICALLY?
Obsession: a man’s doomed obsession with a fantasy woman who doesn’t exist
Guilt: a man’s feelings of guilt over succumbing to vertigo (which contributes to the death of a police officer) and losing the woman he’s obsessed with
The danger of choosing illusion over reality
Loss of equilibrium both literally and figuratively, both physically and spiritually
Debasing manipulation
The mask-like nature of appearances (evidenced by the eponymous woman’s blank face in the opening credits)
The impossibility of forcing life to make you happy
The struggle for personal identity: Is Judy really Judy at the end? She alternates between speaking like Judy and Madeleine as she is dragged up the belltower, and she is increasingly engulfed in shadows, suggesting loss of identify; also, is Scotty himself any longer after Madeleine has died two thirds through the movie? He suffers a loss of identity throughout the picture. Consider, also, that both main characters have two names: Scotty and John/Johnny; and Madeleine and Judy.
Complex psychology: a man falls in love with a woman who doesn’t exist, and then rejects the real woman who shatters his illusion, a woman who has unexpectedly fallen in love with the man she fooled—in this, she too is fooled, because in the end, the man prefers his fantasy over the flesh and blood actress standing before him. With this choice, the man loses both women.
Impotence and sexual aberration: Scotty’s vertigo serves as a symbolic impotence that holds him back from catching up to Madeleine in the bell tower. His injuries require him to wear an emasculating corset. And his fetishistic obsession with trying to remake Judy into his idealized vision of Madeleine is sexually arousing to him.
Voyeurism: a theme Hitchcock used in many pictures, especially Rear Window and Psycho

DOES THE STORY REMIND YOU OF ANY ROMAN OR CLASSIC MYTHS?
Orpheus the musician loses his wife Eurydice (yer-i-di-see) to death and goes into Hades to rescue her, only to lose her again
Pygmalion  who crafts a sculpture of the perfect woman and then falls tragically in love with his creation
Tristan, who weds another woman named Isolde (ee-zold) when the true Isolde of his passions marries another
Dr. Frankenstein, who brought a dead man back to life, resulting in tragic results, just as Scotty tries to bring a dead woman back to life

WHAT IS THE “MACGUFFIN” (THE DEVICE THAT PROPELS THE PLOT, BUT WHICH IS RELATIVELY UNIMPORTANT IN UNDERSTANDING/APPRECIATING THE MOVIE) IN VERTIGO?
Carlotta Valdez and the legends/myths surrounding her
The necklace that Judy chooses to wear, which causes Scotty to waken from his trance
The entire murder/mystery plot, which is filled with holes and implausibilities but which Hitchcock wasn’t as concerned about—instead, he was focusing on creating a powerful emotional and visual template, mood and atmosphere.

WHAT IS DARING AND DIFFERENT ABOUT VERTIGO CONSIDERING ITS RELEASE IN 1958?
The heroine is “killed off” quote unquote a little over halfway through the movie, kind of like how the heroine is offed halfway through Psycho 2 years later
The plot twist of Judy actually being Madeleine is revealed to the audience two thirds through, long before Scotty learns about it. 
This film employs slow, methodical pacing to build mood and suspense, which requires extreme patience and concentration from viewers and risks losing the audience.
Unlike previous Hitchcock films, there is not a happy ending or nicely resolved conclusion—there is no good or bad guy that emerges victorious, except perhaps tragic fate.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE SYMBOLS, MOTIFS AND PATTERNS THAT ARE REPEATED THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE?
Spirals and swirls: in Madeleine’s hair, in the opening credits and dream sequence, in the steps up the bell tower; consider the dead man who fell is splayed in form of a spiral; also the narrative structure of the film is a spiral: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy meets girl, boy loses girl
Corridors and tunnels: the belltower staircase, the tunnel effect of Scotty looking down from the rooftop in the opening scene; Madeleine’s verbal recount of her dream walking down a long corridor; the open grave; the sanitarium corridor that Midge walks down; the car ride back to the mission
Flowers: the flower shop scene, the bouquet in the portrait, and in Madeleine’s hands at the waterside; Scottie’s nightmare; the flower he buys Judy

WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE HITCHCOCK CHOSE TO REVEAL THE JUDY/MADELIENE IDENTITY 20 MINUTES BEFORE SCOTTY LEARNS OF IT?
So that we can build sympathy with Judy and identify with her character, as we had developed an allegiance and sympathy with Scotty earlier
To remove any gimmicky feel to this plot twist that could have been guessed at earlier if it were saved for the end
Hitchcock chooses to give the audience more information than his main protagonist, a technique that helps build suspense. In this way, Hitch chooses suspense over shock/surprise.

HOW DO YOU FEEL IN THE CLIMACTIC SCENE WHEN SCOTTY DRAGS JUDY UP THE BELLTOWER: DO YOU ROOT FOR HIM TO CONQUER HIS VERTIGO AND FEEL GOOD THAT HE’S REALIZED THE TRUTH, OR ARE YOU HORRIFIED AT THE THOUGHT OF HIM POSSIBLY HARMING JUDY OR EXPERIENCING A DÉJÀ VU MOMENT OF LOSS?
By this point, it’s possible to identify and sympathize with both of them, so it’s natural to feel both conflicting emotions.

WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE CAUSES JUDY TO FALL TO HER DEATH AT THE END?
She is frightened by the emerging shadow of the nun, whom she thinks at that moment is the ghost of Madeleine come back
She is losing her grip between reality and fantasy at that point.
Cosmic irony and poetic justice: it’s ironic that Scotty conquers his fear of heights and vertigo symptoms, escapes from the shadow of the past, and acknowledges the truth of how he was deceived just as the woman who embodied the girl of his dreams is destroyed. His victory comes at a terrible price. And for Judy, falling to her death serves as poetic justice for playing a part in Scotty’s earlier deception. 
Don’t forget: this is still the censorship era of the production code; Judy did commit a crime, and the production code required her to pay for that crime by the end of the film.

WHAT ROLE DOES MIDGE PLAY IN THIS LOVE TRIANGLE, AND HOW DOES SHE CONTRAST WITH MADELEINE?
She’s grounded in reality—plainly and uninterestingly so to Scotty.
She’s the opposite of Madeleine: not glamorous or mysterious or refined.
It doesn’t matter that she’s a steady positive influence on him and good to him/for him: she does not fulfill Scotty’s innermost desires.

IRONIES ARE PREVALENT IN “VERTIGO”; CAN YOU CITE ANY EXAMPLES?
Just as Carlotta Valdez was “thrown away,” Elster throws Judy away when he no longer needs her.
At the moment that bookstore owner Pop Liebel “sheds light” on the eerie history of Carlotta and her tragedy, his shop grows visibly dark and foreboding.
In the first half of the film, Scotty tries to wake Madeleine up from her dreamy fantasy, hoping to break her from her trance. In the second half, Judy tries hard to wake Scotty up from his dreamy fantasy, hoping to break him from his trance, but acquiescing ultimately to his fantasy by agreeing to appear as Madeleine.

VERTIGO HAS BEEN CALLED HITCHCOCK’S MOST PERSONAL, REVEALING, HONEST AND SELF-CONFESSIONAL MOVIE. DOES ANYONE WANT TO OFFER A THEORY AS TO WHY THIS IS TRUE?
He liked to cast and manipulate image of icy cool blonde actresses and remake them into his own vision of the feminine ideal, as evidenced by the way he cast and photographed Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren, Eva Marie Saint, Madeleine Carroll, and others.
Scotty serves as a surrogate for the director here—obsessed with a mystery blonde and driven by sexual desire and dark impulses to pursue her, strip her down, dress her up, and shape her like a beautiful mannequin.
Hitchcock knows that he cannot truly possess the females he’s infatuated with nor act on his forbidden sexual compulsions with them; but he likes to fantasize and play-act by using actors and their characters to do his bidding and explore these desires in front of the camera.

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