Vertigo

                                  

I have an interest in films about dreams as they are one of the few things that people cannot protect themselves from.  Vanilla Sky was a fascinating film to me about how the power of the subconscious and how it can affect you.  Vertigo is a film that functions almost as a living dream.

Vertigo, based on a French book by two authors called “De Entre Los Morts” by Pierre Boileu and Pierre Ayraud, is my favorite of Alfred Hitchcock’s many masterpieces.  While Vertigo has a murder mystery as part of its plot, at its heart it is really a dark film about the dangers of romantic obsession.  James Stewart gives an amazing performance as a retired detective, John “Scottie” Ferguson and Kim Novak and Barbara Del Glades are very memorable as the two main women in Scottie’s life.  

As always I will discuss the film’s plot in detail so if you want to remain spoiler free please revisit this page after you have seen the film.  To quickly recap the set up of the film centers on a retired detective who is suffering from acrophobia and vertigo and is hired by an old school acquaintance to follow his disturbed young wife, Madeline, who he believes may be possessed by her deceased great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, who committed suicide at the same age as Madeline is now.  Scottie, the detective, follows her and gradually becomes obsessed and involved with her leading to horrifying consequences.

In his annual movie guide Leonard Maltin describes Vertigo as a “genuinely great film that demands multiple viewings”.  In 2012 Vertigo replaced Citizen Kane as the greatest film of all time in the Sight and Sound poll that comes out once every ten years.  I think Citizen Kane is a powerful film but I also believe it is more notable as to what it did for cinema than for its own story.  Vertigo has an easy plot to follow but it is incredibly layered and unpredictable.

Each time I watch this film I find more things in it to study.  In 1994 I took a cinema course in college because I saw the curriculum included Hitchcock films and I wanted to study the film.  During the course, which also covered several films of Welles and Kubrick, the professor would spend two days per film but in the end decided to drop Vertigo in favor of spending more time on Psycho.  I was pretty disappointed as I think Psycho is a first class horror film but Vertigo to me is a much richer work.  Ultimately I sought out the professor in his free time to ask him some questions on it.  He claimed that Gavin Elster and Scottie were doubles in much the way that the two main characters in Strangers on a Train were. For a long time I did not understand what he meant, especially since Elster does not appear in much of the film even though his actions drive it until I realized what binds them is their treatment of Judy and Madeline.  

Both Scottie and Elster force Judy to create this character of Madeline but for different reasons.  Elster wants to kill his wife.  Scottie wants to bring her back from the dead.  As the two main male characters Elster is polished and accomplished but does not seem arrogant.  Scottie is a more down to earth character for the first half of the film at least though as his obsession with Madeline overtakes him he is driven toward madness.

There are three deaths in the film.  The unnamed police officer falls in the opening sequence, the real Madeline dies in the middle and Judy dies at the end. Scottie is indirectly responsible for the opening and closing deaths and Elster is responsible for the middle one, though Scottie has the biggest reaction to the second one.  All three deaths are by falls from great heights.

As previously stated, Vertigo plays a lot a dream, from the credits which focuses on the spiral of a woman's eye, to Bernard Hermann’s flowing legato score through the heightened emotions that Scottie experiences and in some cases the film jumps from scene to scene without explanation.  The opening chase sequence in which Scottie is hanging from the gutter ends the ways a dream would.  The audience never sees how Scottie was saved from the rooftop.  Since the gutter was coming loose and there was no one else up on the roof to help him it is a wonder how Scottie held on long enough for help to arrive since he was visibly tiring.  If one were to think of the film on a realistic level one explanation might be the people on the ground who find the officer’s body (we hear people react to it on the ground) maybe call the fire department and they bring a ladder to Scottie but it seems hard to believe he could have kept from falling for much longer.  On a figurative level Scottie is left hanging needing help as he ultimately will as he is for much of the story.

The next scene changes to Scottie amicably charming Midge is much lighter, at first.  When Scottie tries to prove that he can overcome his vertigo before the scene quickly turns nightmarish.  Scottie’s face turns horrified in the same way it does as he wakes from his nightmare after the inquest.  It also foreshadows his cruel treatment of Judy later.  The scene seems to be a light relief, more like Rear Window, which was a more comedic thriller and Stewart in this scene only and, resembles his Rear Window character a bit, after the intense opening scene but it’s very dark turn leaves the audience unsettled.  Hitchcock loved toying with his audience.

Later when Scottie is following Madeline into the hotel when he comes in after her no one at the front desk remembers her checking in.  This is never explained and is not a plot hole.  I think Hitchcock put it in to foreshadow the idea of Scottie chasing a ghost.  This is also suggested by Madeline’s first scene.  When Madeline first appears she seems to glide and the camera does not show her legs moving.   

When I watched the film recently I thought about the scene in which Madeline throws herself into San Francisco Bay and Scottie follows her and pulls her out.  Obviously Judy (portraying Madeline) threw herself in to have Scottie believe that she is suicidal which sets up the real Madeline’s murder later in the film.  But then "Madeline" faints and Scottie takes her home and when we see them next she is naked in his bed.  So Judy supposedly faked passing out and then let a strange man undress her while she pretended to be asleep.  I find this more disturbing than if she had just seduced him.

The character of Midge, a character who was not in the book, was a good touch.  In every film the protagonist needs to have someone to talk to in order to give the audience a way into some of their thoughts and background.  Many films simply would have given Scottie a best friend, perhaps someone kind of funny as a release from the tension.  By making Midge a platonic ex girlfriend, she is someone he easily confides in but she also represents the chance he may have had for a normal life since Midge still has feelings for him.  However Scottie is too drawn to darker characters.  Scottie also never really tells Midge how he feels about Madeline but Midge knows Scottie so well it is not needed. If Scottie were to tell Midge about his feelings he would have to admit that it is wrong to pursue a married woman and at no point does he do this in the film.  In the scene in which Midge presents a “Midge” version of the Carlotta painting as a way to reach him I felt very sorry for her.  When Scottie is at his worst, in the third act, Midge, who is the only person who could possibly ground him, is nowhere to be seen.

After Scottie pulls Madeline out of the bay and becomes truly obsessed with her at no point does his conscience seem to intervene.  After all as far as he knows she is not only another man’s wife, but the wife of a friend.  One interpretation of the events that follow is that his obsession and all its ultimately negative effects on him is that it his punishment for the breaking the commandment “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife”.  If this is what Hitchcock is suggesting then he drives it home even further in Psycho in which (spoiler alert, if you have not seen Psycho skip to the next paragraph) Marion Crane is murdered for breaking the commandment “Thou shall not steal”.

Green is a prominent color in the film and, according to Jim Emerson, is “associated with Madeline” is especially apparent when watching the restored version of the film.  Madeline drives a green car and is wearing a green dress when Scottie first sees her.  Scottie wears a green sweater in his first conversation scene with Madeline in front of the fire.  When Judy appears she is wearing a green dress.  Of course the culmination is when Judy recreates the role of Madeline she appears in a green haloed light (though it is a reflection of a sign across the street).

In the inquest after Madeline’s death Scottie is wordless but his face expertly shows the mix of discomfort with the proceedings, his guilt for what he believes is his responsibility, and the sense of loss.  Elster comes across as far more sympathetic as he seems concerned about Scottie even though it was his wife who died.  Of course when Elster is revealed as the killer (although we never see him again) it recasts everything in a different light but I still find the dynamic interesting.

Scottie’s reaction to his nightmare which includes scenes of Scottie’s head disconnected from his body, Scottie meeting the long dead Carlotta (who Scottie had only seen in paintings), and himself falling from the tower is very powerful in that we hear the music and see Scottie’s horrified face but hear nothing uttered from his own mouth.  In the brief institution scene that follows Scottie looks like a weak old man in his rocking chair. 

Scottie’s behavior in the third act is truly reprehensible.  Scottie stalks Judy to her hotel room and once she agrees to see him he gradually makes a Frankenstein monster out of Judy in trying to revive Madeline.  When Scottie sees Judy wearing the necklace and quickly deduces what has happened his rare light mood darkens quickly and subtly as he does not let Judy in on the fact that he has figured out that she portrayed Madeline until they are back at the tower.  Scottie could have been happy that in fact Madeline is alive in her own way but his anger that he had given so much of himself to a lie and that he fell in love with a character instead of a person gives Stewart a different emotion to play.  It is a very brave performance and one of Stewart' best.

I wonder if Judy had planned to have Scottie fall in love with her while portraying Madeline.  Judy is Elster’s mistress but he seems to have only drawn her in so he can use her in his plot to kill Madeline.  I think Judy as Madeline was supposed to intrigue Scottie and confide in him so he would believe she was suicidal and make an attempt to chase her up the tower but in such a carefully planned murder plot love would make for an unpredictable ingredient.  It is clear afterwards that Judy, after having been abandoned by Elster after Madeline’s death (and her involvement in the crime guarantees her silence) is more susceptible to Scottie’s remaking her into Madeline.  She has been coldly dumped and to her perhaps at least Scottie loves her in some way.  

Hitchcock’s decision to reveal Judy’s true identity at the start of the third act is bold and thus puts allows the focus more on the behaviors of the characters than the plot.  Scottie’s behavior has made him a difficult character to relate to.  Since the audience now knows where Judy fits into the plot we see the film more through her point of view.  There is still suspense as we know Scottie somehow will figure this out but Hitchcock allows us to see Judy’s journey and feel her pain (even though she is a guilty murder accomplice).

According to “Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic” by Dan Auiler,  there was a great amount of debate as to whether or not to include this scene.  Hitchcock and his producers went back and forth with it but I do feel the film is far more powerful with it included.  Without it Vertigo would be a clever murder mystery but a lot of the tragedy of Judy’s character would be lost.

Some people at the time felt it is inappropriate that the audience never sees Gavin Elster being arrested.  I never concerned myself with that.  Scottie knows the truth and as a former detective would have no problem going after Elster.  The bigger issue is how Scottie is left.  We last see him looking down after Judy falls.  He has conquered his fear of heights but has paid an enormous price in doing so.  Would he have been able to be happy with Judy had she not fallen?  They were embracing right before Judy fells but Scottie was far from convinced in my opinion.  Oddly he steps right onto the ledge.  Is he thinking of jumping himself?  In my opinion, probably not, but it is open to interpretation.

In the 1990s I watched a French film called “L’Enfer” with Emmanuelle Beart and Francois Cluzet and directed by Claude Chabrol.  In the film they play a couple who own a hotel in a vacation spot in the South of France.  The husband is a very average looking man who is around 40 and Beart at the time would have been in her late twenties and is very beautiful.  The husband, from whose point of view the story is told, gradually becomes obsessed with the idea that his wife must be having an affair, even though there is not much to suggest that she is.  He gradually goes mad with the idea and his obsession with catching her in the act severely damages their marriage.  While watching the film I realized the score was similar to the score for Vertigo and recognized the parallel of a middle aged man obsessed with a younger extremely attractive woman.  Afterwards I discovered the authors of the book L’Enfer was based on had also written D’Entre Los Morts, which was the book that Vertigo was based on.

Vertigo is a fascinating picture from its first frame to its last.  The performances, the strength of the central multilayered relationship, Hitchcock’s mastery of the challenging material and Bernard Hermann’s haunting score is likely to stay with the viewer for some time and incite repeated viewings.  Give Vertigo two hours of your time and you will not be disappointed. *****