Vertigo: Murder, Mystery, Obsession, and a Whole Lot of Other Things

To such an extent does a passion manifest itself in us as a temporary and distinct character that replaces our other character and eliminates the signs, invariable until then, by which it was expressed!

-Swann's Way

I begin this post with a quote from Marcel Proust's modernist masterpiece, Swann's Way, which is about love, obsession, reality, space, time...well, it is about a lot of things. But, so is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo. I always exclaim that it is my favorite of his, even more so than Psycho, Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt, or Strangers on a Train. The complexity of Vertigo is astonishing and I find solace in that fact that I have not fully understood the whole film. Nevertheless, I use this quote from the famed novel because it means a lot to the themes of the film. What we have here are characters engulfing themselves in an unbreakable passion, such that their realities distort as well as their own personalities to the point of absurdity. I've seen this film many times and have studied it relentlessly, so I'll point out some intriguing narrative and visual themes that I hope would help you understand an otherwise outlandish, albeit brilliant, film.

Alteration of reality is a huge element within the film's plot as well as the way the characters develop, specifically their development of their perception of their own reality. One of the most brilliant functions of this theme within the narrative and one that I adore every time I see the film is the inverted role of who is distorting their reality and who is not. Let me explain, we all know that the second 'half' of the film involves Jimmy Stewart altering his reality, and forcing Kim Novak to alter hers, in order to regain his physical passion for Madeline through Judy. Yet, the more subtle aspect of this theme comes in the first half, when Jimmy Stewart's Scottie is the one who is forced to shift his reality, though it is unbeknownst to him as opposed to Novak's Judy who knows the whole time she is being manipulated to turn into Madeline once again (and there is another interesting dynamic). He looks at the picture of Charlotta and then at Madeline, but is there really a connection? Judy, in the end says its a mixture of truth and lies, but nothing is for certain as to what had been true in the first place, so Scottie assumes the connection between the picture and Madeline to further connect this estranged wife and her doomed legacy. Yet, as we know, it was all a setup; a torturous event in which outsiders meddle with Scottie's weaknesses. Scottie becomes impassioned with Madeline which fuels the next half of the film in which he becomes the genesis of such reality distortions. 

To look back at Swann's Way, the main character, M. Swann, falls in love with a women of slightly lower class, Odette, who is described to be not very pretty. Yet, Swann's passion becomes uncontrollable to the point where he takes fragments of his reality and applies it to his love for Odette, fueling his passion to the point of obsession; one fragment is a sonata while the other is a painting (like in the film). Vertigo approaches such a function in a very subtle but, if I may say, exotic way. The color green is a dizzying motif that expresses itself from the confines of the dresses for both Madeline and Judy as well as the car and, of course, the hotel sign which seems to trickle into the hotel room and cast a spell on Scottie, sparking his passion. When Judy transforms into Madeline there is a faint green aura encapsulating her, an otherworldly visualization of passion obfuscating identity. The amount of green, I think, correlates to how much Judy has assumed the role of Madeline or that is Madeline altogether.

One other motif I noticed more on this viewing than in any other viewing is the use of reflections, the double to reflect the split identity of the leading lady, a doppelganger, if you will. Again, this emphasizes the the distortion, or more specifically in this case, the fragmentation of reality innate to the narrative. the question that is pondered through the film is: who's who? Both Stewart and Novak play around with this notion as it flourishes in their interplay.

Who is he looking at? Judy? Madeline?

Here is a representation of the film's narrative structure through its main characters, the two halves.

It is a film in which what we see can be misleading; the reality present before us is a projection of the internal feelings of the characters. Thus, the reflections are a glimpse into the folly of the main characters, who seem entrenched in this impassioned identity crisis. This leads to the idea of how one character looks upon another, more specifically how Scottie looks upon Madeline/Judy; Hitchcock's favorite theme: voyeurism. This film has some one the most sensual, invasive dolly shots and extreme close-ups in any film by the famed director. Feelings of both discomfort and erotica stem from such shots. Take note of the medium close-ups of the main women in the film, their faces viewed from the side as the speak and breath; the male gaze at its most piercing. Again, this all goes back to the perception of reality that seems to be wildly changing. Scottie's passion is in its most physical form as we regard his perspective on the female body. I'll refrain from showing you a list of pictures for sake of time, but make sure to take note of those heavy shots.

...for one thing love and death have in common, more than those vague resemblances people are always talking about, is that they make us question more deeply, for fear that its reality will slip away from us, the mystery of personality.

-Swann's Way

The first time I watched this fill in full I fell in love with the way the story was presented to me, the way in which reality is inverted, distorted, or doubled before our eyes. Hitchcock's film digs deep into the human soul to find a dark and troubling essence in the way in which we manipulate our environment to quench our fiery passions. In a sense, I feel this film is Hitchcock's most human film (though that can be argued, obviously) in that we observe such kaleidoscopic feelings and actions yet what we are left with is, like in the quote, 'the mystery of personality'. Some moments of the film I can only guess what the characters are feeling, especially in the face of Kim Novak, whose presence seems to hint at expression but then she retracts before anything becomes palpable. Even the way she walks, early in the film, it seems she floats, a sort of lucid phantasm that doesn't necessarily fit into the time and place of the film's setting. I'll leave you with this notion of perception and mystery, two things that Vertigo exemplifies so well. In another sense, look at it this way: if you are bothered by the ending, think not of why something is happening on but how it is going on. Two moments in the story are direct examples to this statement: one is the scene where Judy confesses everything in a letter, the audience now knows everything to the crime, but she ends up ripping it up and it becomes a red herring until the very end. The second one is when she states that the story of Madeline and Carlotta is a mixture of truth and lies (like I said earlier), such that the statement as erll as the truthfulness of the story becomes irrelevant. Hitchcock and many great directors with their great films tend to focus more on the how rather than why.

Dang, I didn't even touch upon the opening credits, the dream sequence, and the incomparable soundtrack by Bernard Hermann. I guess I'll leave that for another time.