Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo"
Of all of Hitchcock's film I've seen, his 1958 masterwork "Vertigo" is by far is most perplexing. Walking away from the film, I feel a sense of confusion. Not necessarily because the film is rampant with plot holes, because really that's not the point of the film. Hitchcock films are full of plot holes and usually those turn out to be unnecessary to the integrity of the film. No, what confuses me about "Vertigo" is something far more deeper.
The film plays out like a noir: a retired detective gets dragged into a mystery involving a blonde femme fatale. However, "Vertigo," with its bright saturated colors, looks nothing like a noir visually. Rather, its the visual inverse of one. However, Hitchcock uses the beauty of this incredible cinematography by Robert Burks to his own advantage. Typically in a noir, our protagonist cannot resist the urge to continue in his investigation, gravitating towards uncovering some truth, the beauty of a woman, or satiating his own restless curiosity. He simply cannot resist chasing the rabbit down the rabbit hole, typically to his own demise. Well, in this scenario, Hitchcock makes the viewer subjectively linked to our protagonist, as we mirror his singularly-focused intrigue. Not only does the visual beauty of the film draw us in, but the mysterious psychological state of our femme fatale captures our attention. Hitchcock presents to us something alluring. Our protagonist, Scottie (played by James Stewart), is hired by an old colleague to follow his wife, Madeleine, due to the suspicion that she is psychologically inhabited by the ghost of her great-grandmother who died almost a century ago. Once Scotty begins following her, her actions and the places she visits only seems to confirms these suspicions. As a viewer, I was all-in. The mentally stability of some mystery woman was all too enticing. This, combined with the visual beauty of the film provides a nice, colorful candy that entices the viewer (and Scotty) to chase down. Like the protagonist of any film noir, we too are curious and wish to satisfy that curiosity. However, this nice little treat that is dangled in front of us will ultimately lead down a labyrinth of confusion and conspiracy and ultimately, to damnation. The same goes for Scottie, who falls in love with the mystery woman and is ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts to save her from suicide, like her great-grandmother before her. He ends up in a mental hospital, as he cannot reconcile the guilt he feels from letting Madeleine fall to her death due to his psychological fear of heights - his vertigo. His love interest is dead, his psychological state is in shambles, and he still has no answers. This is how a film noir usually ends. However, we are only 2/3 of the way through the film. Hitchcock does not stop there.
With Scottie psychologically rehabilitating himself from this trauma, he sees a woman on the street who looks just like Madeleine, except with a different hair style, hair color, facial make-up, etc. He is once again enraptured by this woman, just as he was Madeleine. He follows her back to her apartment, and introduces himself. After she agrees to go on a date with him, it is revealed by Hitchcock that this IS the real Madeleine. In a voiceover, she reveals to the audience that she was hired by the real Madeleine's husband to pose as his wife so that Scottie would follow her and witness her suicide, unable to go up the bell tower to save her from jumping off due to his vertigo. The real Madeleine was the one who was thrown to her death by her husband who wanted to collect insurance money and flee the country. This revelation that all of this was a deliberate convolution plays into the film noir elements, as the typical noir protagonist gets way in over his head in a situation he has little understanding of, typically leading him to uncover that all of it was a devised orchestration by a powerful man. However, as we sit with fake Madeleine, whose real name is Judy, the entire film flips its perspective. From this point forward, we are subjectively linked with Judy.
As Judy and Scottie begin to date, Judy wishes that Scottie would love her just for her, not because of the fake Madeleine she was pretending to be. As time goes in, he begins to covet the image of the woman she used to be and begins to change Judy's appearance to progressively look more and more like Madeleine. From this point forward, we are now occupying the female perspective and see these attempts to change her as an aggressively possessive move by the overbearing male lead. The late Madeleine's husband hired her to play a role for his own misogynistic gain. After using her in this way, it seems that Scottie is also just using her to fulfil his misogynistic desires. Scottie would rather her play the role of his former obsession than actually be herself. Scottie is in love with the image of Madeleine, not in love with the real life woman that is Judy. The men in the film use and abuse the female image, objectifying and and using it to their own advantage and self-interest. It can be said that Hitchcock has done something similar in his films. There is a common phrase people use when studying film called "The Hitchcock Blonde." Hitchcock uses the image of a blonde, beautiful female and then, as Roger Ebert notes, "drags it through the mud." Hitchcock uses the image of a woman and abuses it, perhaps because he is a sexually frustrated man, perhaps because he is identifying with real world issue involving real world acts of violence against women. Regardless, "Vertigo" is the closest he's ever come to subjectively inhabiting the female perspective and in doing so, has revealed the conundrum most women find themselves in. That is, being looked at as an image, rather than as a person. Being possessed, rather than viewed as an equal. The last 1/3 of "Vertigo" finds our perspective switched from that of the observer of the image to one being observed as an image.
By the end, Scottie has learned the truth of this deceit and takes Judy back to the bell tower to reconcile with the truth. In doing so, he becomes overly aggressive and it begins to sink in that he may very well murder her. He aggressively drags her up the bell tower in shots that fully demonstrate his aggression and violence. In the beginning, Scottie was a likeable, relatable protagonist with whom we identified. Now, we are fully removed from him. We are now viewing him with judgement, despite his anger over this plot to use him. As he looks down the bell tower, he becomes dizzy due to his vertigo. We as the viewer have become dizzy, as well. Our perspectives have shifted dramatically throughout the film. The culmination of mystery, sanity vs insanity, body doubles, conspiracy, shifting perspective, shifting themes and tones, and shifting notions about the psychology about our characters, has placed us too in a state of vertigo. Everything about the film has been unbalanced. This is the reason for my confusion about the film. Not because anything about the film is that confusing. Rather, the psychology of the film drags and pulls you in so many directions that you become unbalanced, as the title reminds us.
To achieve these confusing states of psychological instability, Hitchcock devised visuals that I would consider his upmost best. The most famous example is the dolly zoom effect. Because of his vertigo, when Scottie looks down from a large height, the camera articulates his visual fear. Hitchcock takes his camera and physically moves it away from the subject whilst simultaneously zooming out. The subject remains its size in the frame while the background perspective changes. This effect emphasizes Scottie's disorientation. This camera trick was so successful in its visual achievement, it started to become called "the Vertigo effect."
This is not the only visual that enraptured me as a viewer. The whole film is layered with these visual indulgences. Hitchcock's use of heavily saturated color provides a dreamlike quality to the film. For example, in the scene in which Scottie sees "Madeleine" for the first time, we are in a bright red room. The room really catches your attention and shrouds the scene with a sense of red-hot sexual longing for 'Madeleine,' who will continue to be a sexual fixture of our protagonist's eye.
Later, fake Madeleine takes Scottie to the Redwood Forest. There, she finally admits to her psychologically imbalanced state, as she believes herself to be the ghost of her dead grandmother. Moving through the forest, Hitchcock films her like a ghostly spectacle. In one moment, she walks out away from Scottie and then turns and disappears behind a group of trees. Scottie, concerned, begins to walk to his right, shifting his perspective so that he can see her. With this change, the camera slowly moves horizontally on its axis, as the trees being to move in the frame. This incredibly eerie shot provides a sense of suspense, as we too are trying to identify the state of the ghostly and creepy faux Madeleine.
There is also a dream sequence that enraptures the viewer later when Scottie is having a nightmare about faux Madeline's death. Hitchcock uses animation and colorful visuals to psychedelic effects. After presenting a hurricane-shape of assorted circular lines, we see Stewart's face frightened in front of us, surrounded by a swirling vortex of color and confusion. Just then, we see a silhouette of his body as it begins to fall. First, it appears to fall off a rooftop onto the ground below. Then, Hitchcock removes the dreamy, color-infused exterior to reveal a hollow, white void. The trapped silhouette then falls into a vast white nothingness. Then, Scottie wakes in terror. The dream sequence is mesmerizing and horrifying. While watching, I felt my chest begin to tighten in terror. The effect was that of anxiety-inducing horror and terror.
Some of the more fascinating visual occurrences happen later when Scottie is in Judy's apartment. Bright green light encompasses her room due to the bright green neon sign hanging outside her apartment building. In one scene, she sits on her bed and Scottie becomes entranced in her silhouette, recognizes it as belonging to Madeleine. Later, he forces her to dress up as Madeleine. When she emerges from the bathroom, he now has restored the image of the woman he was obsessed with. A bright green fog surrounds her, enveloping her. Out walks the woman of his dreams. The scenes play out like a fever dream and leaves a firm impression on the viewer.
All in all, "Vertigo" plays out like a psychological fever dream film noir. It is by far Hitchcock's most perplexing film. While watching, you're never entirely sure what is going on, what is about to happen, who is who, who should be identified with, and what psychological state you're collapsing into. Hitchcock pulls you into the psychological entrapment, presenting a tasty treat for you to chase. While you chase it down, you only go further and further into the realms of confusion, imbalance, and vertigo.
Comments
Post a Comment