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Vertigo: The Underworld Descent
by Davell Swan
Scottie Ferguson, played by James Stewart, falls hard for Kim Novak's Judy Barton encouraged by Bernard Hermann's fabulously romantic score. photo: courtesy A. HitchcockNote: For the full effect of this article, read the four part series, CineSource's "Vertigo" Investigations Parts 1, 3 and 4:
• Why Me: An Investigation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Nov, 2011)
• Vertigo: The Search Goes On (Jun, 2012)
• Vertigo IV: Doom Or Happiness? (Sep, 2012)
In, Part I of our “Vertigo” critique we introduced "John 'Scottie' Ferguson" (James Stewart), his now-platonic ex-fiancee "Marjorie 'Midge' Wood" (Barbara Bel Geddes) and an old college chum, the murderous and conniving "Gavin Elster" (Tom Helmore). Scottie, after apparently avoiding a nasty fall from a high roof, has been diagnosed with a fear of heights, acrophobia, which leads to vertigo, dizziness, thereby sidelining his career with the San Francisco Police Department.
Elster decides to use his old friend Scottie's fear of heights to set him up as a witness to the supposed suicide of Mrs. Elster, who is actually the shop girl, "Judy Barton," played by Kim Novak. Scottie is to follow his pal's "wife," called "Madeleine," because she disappears for lengthy spells without any reasonable explanation.
Elster claims Madeleine's long dead great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, has taken control of her and may be pushing Mad toward a self-inflicted death, similar to her relative Carlotta's.
Unfortunately Scottie, and Judy (as Madeleine), fall deeply in love. Previously, we suggested that “Vertigo” is a nearly-infinite spiral and that Hitchcock may have seeded the film with preposterous amounts of Freudian symbolism, as a red herring for critics.
(We encourage readers to imbibe the first part of this review, 'Why Me: An Investigation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo', before continuing, in the interest of grasping the many complications.)
Having agreed to sneak a look at the mystery-bound wife, Scottie nurses a drink at the bar of the famous and now defunct Ernie's, an olde-money restaurant in North Beach. Hitchcock's camera tracks forward and seems to penetrate its double doors; inside, we pan past masculine posts topped by feminine curves.
Scottie preternaturally surmises this woman could be the answer to all of his longing. As he takes the first of many looks at her from behind, the score rises. The fabulously emotional and deeply romantic, Bernard Hermann-provided theme for Judy-cum-Madeleine, encourages the viewer—no matter their sexual preference—to fall along with Scottie for this majestic creature: Madeleine.
As with Francie at the end the costume ball during Hitchcock's "To Catch A Thief" (1955), Mad is somehow able to angelically glide in her floor-length gown, as opposed to trundling along. Thus begins Scottie's descent into the underworld, which is underlined by his agreeing to drink.
When he was first offered alcohol by Elster, he declined, but from now on he will accept or ask for a drink. We must wonder if Scottie's urgent need for companionship, beyond what friendly, unmysterious Midge can provide, comes from the itch he suffered under remote areas of his corset (as occurred in his previous role as Jeffries, in "Rear Window". There, a metaphorically cast-covered itch apparently leads to a face-off with an enraged killer; here, it may have given life to an exceedingly wicked man, his soon-to-be-murdered wife and an attractive floozy.)
Alas, HC's characters never learn from their cinematic antecedents and often unknowingly release chaos with their wishes and fantasies. In this case, the mistake will take our hero into terrors equal to the fall he may have escaped. As he surreptitiously follows Madeleine, Scottie's erotic motivation progresses from kindly if lonely concern, into a sick desire for his supposed friend's supposed wife.
This chase mainly occurs sans dialogue, presenting Hitchcock with an unrivaled opportunity to employ what he defines as "pure cinema." Mad passes by the two phallic columns framing the parking lot of the Elsters' luxury apartment. Literally hanging on the side of a San Francisco, Nob Hill precipice, it's an index of her status as unattainable, at least for the acrophobic.
The inescapable spiral that traps Fergusen/Stewart evokes M.C. Escher and is accented by Hitchcock's classic track-back, and zoom-forward trick. photo: courtesy A. HitchcockScottie watches her, partially hidden by the thrusting A-pillar of the wrapped windshield gracing his 1956 DeSoto Firedome Sportsman two-door hardtop. Her 1957 Jaguar Mk VIII Saloon, not unlike Midge's 1956 VW Karmann Ghia sports car, has evocative, feminine dorsal fenders, but of a more traditional, elegant nature. Every other vehicle on the road contrasts this with contemporary styling, linking her to the past.
Madeleine parks in a dingy alley and, as Scottie trails her into a dank back room, our imagination blooms. However, it proves to be nothing more than the uninteresting rear entrance of a flower shop. In a close-up we see him leering at her through a door jam, looking ever more like a sicko peeping tom, which as his attraction grows, he's becoming.
Along with other references to "Rear Window", also starring Stewart as a voyeur, this suggests “Vertigo”, among many other things, is a variation on HC's theme of director, photographer and audience as privacy-stealing watchers, while unashamedly revealing the hand behind the camera.
William Rothman, in his 1982 book, "Hitchcock—The Murderous Gaze", states he believes all of the HC canon right from "The Lodger" (1926-27) fundamentally addresses issues of theatricality. One can't help but notice protagonists of various HC productions going in and out of the specific personalities they present to each of the film's other characters. This comments on how we all often "act" within our daily lives, while providing a dose, unusual for popular filmmaking, of powerful realism.
Obviously, Judy is "acting" for the benefit of Scottie, and as he gets to know her, he's forced to do the same.
"His achievement, in part, was to create the first films that, fully embracing the medium, reflected seriously on their nature as films," notes Rothman. "If there is a modern cinema... it begins with Hitchcock, in whose work film attains a modern* self-consciousness." (*Or even post-modern?)
If Kim-Judy is headed up Russian Hill, Coit Tower—"coit" from Latin for coitus—in the background, James-Scottie can't be far behind. photo: courtesy A. HitchcockMad walks toward and is reflected in a mirror to the left of the door, inscrutable, looking past Scottie. He furtively closes the door and moves back to his car. She returns to her vehicle carrying a new bouquet. He's sloppy as he closely follows, due to an intoxication with what could nearly be described as a succubus. (Elster, for now, has created a Little Monster, parallel to himself, as the Big Monster.)
After she parks in front of Mission Dolores, Mad walks toward Scottie's nearby car and enters the church. She can see that the plan's working and that he must be a dupe, getting "burned" so easily. One may think poor Scottie has sold his soul, to survive the fall, and this is his punishment.
As he emerges from the passenger side of his car, the low-angle shot reveals him as a somnambulist, with now even his own vehicle driving his behavior, as it releases him to follow Mad. He enters the long church hall, and trails after her into the graveyard, passing the many apparently obscenely-leaning gravestones. As in HC's "Family Plot" (1976), our hero stalks a woman through a cemetery. This one's atmospherically misty, but artificially so—the neighborhood is shielded from coastal fog by the Twin Peaks hills.
Exterior; Long Shot - the Palace of the Legion of Honor: Female and male symbols are represented by its portal and columns. Inside, Madeleine stares at a portrait of Carlotta Valdes, clutching a bouquet similar to hers. We track toward Mad's twirled hairdo, then approach the portrait, moving within it, to achieve a simulated animation. The camera's closing in on the darkness found in the middle of Carlotta's also spiraled do, previews a feature of "Psycho" (1960), wherein water from Marion Crane's abortive shower is followed into the darkness of the bath tub drain.
Scottie follows Mad to the McKittrick Hotel, with an obsession now so great that he fails to notice the deep tarmacked canyon it's perched near. The hotel sign seems to move as he tracks toward the building, thereby adding to the feeling that he's beginning to dislocate.
The McKittrick is a prelude to the Bates' house of "Psycho", completed by Madeleine's staring out of a second story window toward screen-left, just as Mrs. Bates seemingly will. He sneaks in through the front door facing a staircase, just as a later dick, Arbogast, likewise shall in the above film. We're then confronted with a registration desk (a fave HC prop), which is helmed by a (living) Mrs. Bates look-a-like.
Like all classics, 'Vertigo' is reinterpreted for every generation, here for the psychedelic crowd using the 60s poster art at San Francisco's Castro Theater. photo: courtesy Castro TheaterScottie flashes the cop badge that he contrived to keep after his resignation, thereby impersonating an officer, to determine the name Madeleine's room's rented under. That he began his moral and practical "fall", prior to meeting with Elster, could be another indication that this nightmare was self-predicated, no doubt by his romantic needs. Mad isn't in her room and the clerk claims she hasn't been there. To prove the point, she allows Scottie to violate the privacy of the room, again looking forward to an occurrence from the 1960 HC film. He looks out of the window only to realize Mad's car isn't parked in front of the hotel.
She has realized her first surrealistic disappearance from Scottie's view, as part of a growing assault on his empirical perspective.
Midge now rates a rare visit, mainly in the role of knowing aged SF characters happy to dispense information regarding the city's intimate history. Agreeing to take Scottie to one such person, she rushes out of her apartment, leaving him, in a typical Hitchcockian, nearly Neo-realistic moment, to speak only to himself about her quick exit and to gulp his drink while running out of the door only to reach back and drop it on the counter, as if he's elasticized.
Outside of the Argosy Bookshop, helmed by Midge's pal Pop Leibel, we're treated to a super-3D vista, via reflections on the window of seemingly-normal pedestrians and vehicles moving past, over complicated occurrences inside. This is a richer, more meaningful tableau, in comparison to the travel agency window present at the initial credit sequence of "To Catch A Thief". Here “Vertigo” posits the presence of a dangerous or unhealthy obsession, contrasted with contemporary, every day life.
Pop tells of Carlotta losing her mind and wandering the streets of the city, looking for her child that had been taken away; to a degree, this gives Scottie a glimpse toward his own future. He returns Midge to her abode, which is atop a steep hill; visible are Freudian towers, of both the Golden Gate and the Oakland Bay Bridge.
Hitchcock loved independent, strong women, not unlike like his own mother. Alma, HC's life-partner, was also a woman who knew her own mind and refused to pretend otherwise. (When not officially employed in connection with one of her husband's scripts, her imprimatur was often necessary for HC's acceptance of a project, a screenplay, or an uncertain piece of dialogue. Alma asked for the removal of one shot in “Vertigo”, in which she felt Kim Novak's calves were too thick. It would seem that in their personal life, she was the Butch.)
Arguably the most iconic shot, scene and theme ever to incorporate the Golden Gate Bridge. photo: courtesy A. HitchcockThough Midge lacks Mad's mysterious allure, she's smart and tough. Consider how she saved Scottie from falling to the floor, when the experiment of climbing her kitchen stool caused his swoon. She is now able to add Pop's info regarding Carlotta to the phone call from Elster, and after asking Scottie if Madeleine's pretty and getting a begrudged affirmation, to figure out (exactly) why he's trailing her. She ridicules him.
After finally ejecting Midge from the car, Scottie ponders a catalog illustration of the Valdes portrait, imagining Mad in her place, as if he's starting to believe in this hokey haunting.
Reporting back to Elster, within the walls of his olde-world gentleman's club, Scottie is advised that Mad's taken to wearing Carlotta's jewelry, and has no knowledge of her great-grandmother. Scottie accepts another a drink.
Many HC flicks feature leads tortured and controlled by dead parents, but here a non-existent character is pretending to be under the power of a great-grandmother she knows nothing of; a bit of a mess, Eh?
The next day, Scottie's starkly-pointed DeSoto follows Mad's rounder Jaguar to Fort Point, the 19th century military base beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. After throwing petals from her bouquet into the bay, she jumps in after them, presumably seeking a wet grave. Did Elster research whether or not Scottie was a good swimmer? We'll never know, but into the drink he goes, believing he's saving The Girl. He fishes her out of the no doubt freezing water (over and over during the shooting, according to set lore—possibly as punishment for Novak having too many adamant ideas of her own about costuming).
Scottie's now holding Madeleine closely in the front seat of her car. She appears to be in a trance, barely opening her eyes. As his face nears her's (for a ménage a trois with the viewer, similar to that in "Rear Window" with the same actor and Grace Kelly as love-interest "Lisa Fremont"), desperately intoning her name, he seems to be quite disturbed.
Interior; Scottie's apartment: he's waiting expectantly in the cozy living room with a beautifully-lit Coit Tower visible through the picture window. A slow pan left shows that Madeleine's clothing, including her under-garments, are hanging in his kitchen to dry. We realize the layout here is similar to the apartment of Stewart's earlier character, Jeffries, in "Rear Window". Continuing the pan, Mad's found, presumably in her birthday suit, under the covers of Scottie's bed.
The phone's in the bedroom, and it rings as Elster calls, ostensibly unaware of the circumstances. Scottie runs to answer it and Judy appears to awaken with a start, as Madeleine. Soon, in his robe, she's sitting on pillows in front of the fireplace. She asks him to fetch her purse. Occasionally a Hitchcockian male character will find himself carrying a woman's purse. "Dial M For Murder" (1954) has a bobby holding the heroine's purse, as evidence he's taking to the station. In this case, the purpose is a continuing of Scottie's humiliation.
A pregnant moment occurs as he comes near; suddenly they're more than just friends. The telephone rings and as Scottie begins a rise to answer it, she says in a bedroom voice—"I'm married you know". One must wonder how HC was able to slide this sequence past not only the censor, but also the Catholic Church and the Legion Of Decency. In the hands of any other filmmaker working during the repressive mid-fifties, this would not have been possible. Returning from the call he finds that Mad has again vanished.
Another day, Scottie's lurking outside of Madeleine's home, waiting to trail her. Doing so, he passes a parked doppelganger of his DeSoto, continuing the tightening of the circle, or noose around our hero's neck. She then takes him in a consternating serious of left and right turns, until they find themselves back at his apartment.
He acts as if he coincidentally has just returned himself. She has a thank you note. "I couldn't mail it," she explains, "I had to know your address... had a land mark, I remembered Coit Tower." "Well, that's the first time I've been grateful for Coit Tower", Scottie advises, as it looms upright in the background, appearing not to be an abstract symbol, but as a very specific icon; at this, its pivotal moment within the screenplay.
They decide to wander together. She's driving her Jaguar as he sits next to her in the middle of the wide front seat, looking a bit silly. They cross the Golden Gate Bridge, under of which they both recently got a dunking, into Marin County. They eventually find themselves in a Northern California redwood forest. We're now faced with “Vertigo”'s central, uber-circle—a giant tree section, bearing dates coinciding with its rings, going back to 909 A.D. Combined with the still-fresh memory of the above situation predicated on the size and strength of Coit Tower, this suggests a Freudian apocalypse. ("Coit," from the Latin, coitus.)
Their growing romance meets with the foggy and mysterious past in this lush setting, to create a moment that, although packed with meaning, is ultimately about the kind of mood and experience only cinema can provide; or at least that of Alfred Hitchcock. Despite the couple's increasing closeness, she manifests a zombie-like trance, thereby continuing the insinuation that “Vertigo” is a surrealistic horror movie, while also indicating that she's still effecting Elster's plan. Her presence is lost and again we're faced with a person-less shot.
Within many of his movies, HC will find a motivation to present an abstract shot, lacking any characters, to express absurdity. Here, it's part of a series providing a hint to Scottie that Mad is non-existent; he sadly fails to notice. He asks her when she was born and where she goes. Answering as Judy (unbeknownst to him), she begs him to stop and take her out of the darkness.
Cut to a new scene next to a tumultuous Pacific Ocean with windswept trees (leading one's location-scout section of the mind to suspect this was shot south of SF, along the Monterey Peninsula, as opposed to east of the redwood forest). Harking back to HC's "Spellbound" (1945), with psychiatrist Dr. Constance Peterson having John Ballantine describe a nightmare for clues regarding his amnesia; and looking forward to "Marnie'''s (1964) amateur psycho-analysis, Mad confesses a bizarre dream for Scottie's interpretation.
"It's as though I'm walking along a long, long corridor that was once mirrored and fragments of that mirror still hang there," she says. "When I come to the end of that corridor, there's nothing but darkness and I know that when I go into that darkness I'll die."
The meaning and effect of this particular dream-telling is different from that of the earlier film, as here it's integral to Elster's evil scheme, that our erstwhile detective is apparently unable to suss. Hesitatingly, she then talks of sitting alone in a room, looking into a fresh grave that's her's, and of a tower with a bell, which could be in Spain.
We'll continue our close look at “Vertigo”, possibly Hitchcock's most complex and meaningful film, in the next issue of CineSource.
Posted on Feb 01, 2012 - 11:24 AM
by Davell Swan
Scottie Ferguson, played by James Stewart, falls hard for Kim Novak's Judy Barton encouraged by Bernard Hermann's fabulously romantic score. photo: courtesy A. Hitchcock• Why Me: An Investigation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Nov, 2011)
• Vertigo: The Search Goes On (Jun, 2012)
• Vertigo IV: Doom Or Happiness? (Sep, 2012)
In, Part I of our “Vertigo” critique we introduced "John 'Scottie' Ferguson" (James Stewart), his now-platonic ex-fiancee "Marjorie 'Midge' Wood" (Barbara Bel Geddes) and an old college chum, the murderous and conniving "Gavin Elster" (Tom Helmore). Scottie, after apparently avoiding a nasty fall from a high roof, has been diagnosed with a fear of heights, acrophobia, which leads to vertigo, dizziness, thereby sidelining his career with the San Francisco Police Department.
Elster decides to use his old friend Scottie's fear of heights to set him up as a witness to the supposed suicide of Mrs. Elster, who is actually the shop girl, "Judy Barton," played by Kim Novak. Scottie is to follow his pal's "wife," called "Madeleine," because she disappears for lengthy spells without any reasonable explanation.
Elster claims Madeleine's long dead great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, has taken control of her and may be pushing Mad toward a self-inflicted death, similar to her relative Carlotta's.
Unfortunately Scottie, and Judy (as Madeleine), fall deeply in love. Previously, we suggested that “Vertigo” is a nearly-infinite spiral and that Hitchcock may have seeded the film with preposterous amounts of Freudian symbolism, as a red herring for critics.
(We encourage readers to imbibe the first part of this review, 'Why Me: An Investigation of Hitchcock’s Vertigo', before continuing, in the interest of grasping the many complications.)
Having agreed to sneak a look at the mystery-bound wife, Scottie nurses a drink at the bar of the famous and now defunct Ernie's, an olde-money restaurant in North Beach. Hitchcock's camera tracks forward and seems to penetrate its double doors; inside, we pan past masculine posts topped by feminine curves.
As with Francie at the end the costume ball during Hitchcock's "To Catch A Thief" (1955), Mad is somehow able to angelically glide in her floor-length gown, as opposed to trundling along. Thus begins Scottie's descent into the underworld, which is underlined by his agreeing to drink.
When he was first offered alcohol by Elster, he declined, but from now on he will accept or ask for a drink. We must wonder if Scottie's urgent need for companionship, beyond what friendly, unmysterious Midge can provide, comes from the itch he suffered under remote areas of his corset (as occurred in his previous role as Jeffries, in "Rear Window". There, a metaphorically cast-covered itch apparently leads to a face-off with an enraged killer; here, it may have given life to an exceedingly wicked man, his soon-to-be-murdered wife and an attractive floozy.)
Alas, HC's characters never learn from their cinematic antecedents and often unknowingly release chaos with their wishes and fantasies. In this case, the mistake will take our hero into terrors equal to the fall he may have escaped. As he surreptitiously follows Madeleine, Scottie's erotic motivation progresses from kindly if lonely concern, into a sick desire for his supposed friend's supposed wife.
This chase mainly occurs sans dialogue, presenting Hitchcock with an unrivaled opportunity to employ what he defines as "pure cinema." Mad passes by the two phallic columns framing the parking lot of the Elsters' luxury apartment. Literally hanging on the side of a San Francisco, Nob Hill precipice, it's an index of her status as unattainable, at least for the acrophobic.
The inescapable spiral that traps Fergusen/Stewart evokes M.C. Escher and is accented by Hitchcock's classic track-back, and zoom-forward trick. photo: courtesy A. HitchcockMadeleine parks in a dingy alley and, as Scottie trails her into a dank back room, our imagination blooms. However, it proves to be nothing more than the uninteresting rear entrance of a flower shop. In a close-up we see him leering at her through a door jam, looking ever more like a sicko peeping tom, which as his attraction grows, he's becoming.
Along with other references to "Rear Window", also starring Stewart as a voyeur, this suggests “Vertigo”, among many other things, is a variation on HC's theme of director, photographer and audience as privacy-stealing watchers, while unashamedly revealing the hand behind the camera.
William Rothman, in his 1982 book, "Hitchcock—The Murderous Gaze", states he believes all of the HC canon right from "The Lodger" (1926-27) fundamentally addresses issues of theatricality. One can't help but notice protagonists of various HC productions going in and out of the specific personalities they present to each of the film's other characters. This comments on how we all often "act" within our daily lives, while providing a dose, unusual for popular filmmaking, of powerful realism.
Obviously, Judy is "acting" for the benefit of Scottie, and as he gets to know her, he's forced to do the same.
"His achievement, in part, was to create the first films that, fully embracing the medium, reflected seriously on their nature as films," notes Rothman. "If there is a modern cinema... it begins with Hitchcock, in whose work film attains a modern* self-consciousness." (*Or even post-modern?)
If Kim-Judy is headed up Russian Hill, Coit Tower—"coit" from Latin for coitus—in the background, James-Scottie can't be far behind. photo: courtesy A. HitchcockAfter she parks in front of Mission Dolores, Mad walks toward Scottie's nearby car and enters the church. She can see that the plan's working and that he must be a dupe, getting "burned" so easily. One may think poor Scottie has sold his soul, to survive the fall, and this is his punishment.
As he emerges from the passenger side of his car, the low-angle shot reveals him as a somnambulist, with now even his own vehicle driving his behavior, as it releases him to follow Mad. He enters the long church hall, and trails after her into the graveyard, passing the many apparently obscenely-leaning gravestones. As in HC's "Family Plot" (1976), our hero stalks a woman through a cemetery. This one's atmospherically misty, but artificially so—the neighborhood is shielded from coastal fog by the Twin Peaks hills.
Exterior; Long Shot - the Palace of the Legion of Honor: Female and male symbols are represented by its portal and columns. Inside, Madeleine stares at a portrait of Carlotta Valdes, clutching a bouquet similar to hers. We track toward Mad's twirled hairdo, then approach the portrait, moving within it, to achieve a simulated animation. The camera's closing in on the darkness found in the middle of Carlotta's also spiraled do, previews a feature of "Psycho" (1960), wherein water from Marion Crane's abortive shower is followed into the darkness of the bath tub drain.
Scottie follows Mad to the McKittrick Hotel, with an obsession now so great that he fails to notice the deep tarmacked canyon it's perched near. The hotel sign seems to move as he tracks toward the building, thereby adding to the feeling that he's beginning to dislocate.
The McKittrick is a prelude to the Bates' house of "Psycho", completed by Madeleine's staring out of a second story window toward screen-left, just as Mrs. Bates seemingly will. He sneaks in through the front door facing a staircase, just as a later dick, Arbogast, likewise shall in the above film. We're then confronted with a registration desk (a fave HC prop), which is helmed by a (living) Mrs. Bates look-a-like.
Like all classics, 'Vertigo' is reinterpreted for every generation, here for the psychedelic crowd using the 60s poster art at San Francisco's Castro Theater. photo: courtesy Castro TheaterShe has realized her first surrealistic disappearance from Scottie's view, as part of a growing assault on his empirical perspective.
Midge now rates a rare visit, mainly in the role of knowing aged SF characters happy to dispense information regarding the city's intimate history. Agreeing to take Scottie to one such person, she rushes out of her apartment, leaving him, in a typical Hitchcockian, nearly Neo-realistic moment, to speak only to himself about her quick exit and to gulp his drink while running out of the door only to reach back and drop it on the counter, as if he's elasticized.
Outside of the Argosy Bookshop, helmed by Midge's pal Pop Leibel, we're treated to a super-3D vista, via reflections on the window of seemingly-normal pedestrians and vehicles moving past, over complicated occurrences inside. This is a richer, more meaningful tableau, in comparison to the travel agency window present at the initial credit sequence of "To Catch A Thief". Here “Vertigo” posits the presence of a dangerous or unhealthy obsession, contrasted with contemporary, every day life.
Pop tells of Carlotta losing her mind and wandering the streets of the city, looking for her child that had been taken away; to a degree, this gives Scottie a glimpse toward his own future. He returns Midge to her abode, which is atop a steep hill; visible are Freudian towers, of both the Golden Gate and the Oakland Bay Bridge.
Hitchcock loved independent, strong women, not unlike like his own mother. Alma, HC's life-partner, was also a woman who knew her own mind and refused to pretend otherwise. (When not officially employed in connection with one of her husband's scripts, her imprimatur was often necessary for HC's acceptance of a project, a screenplay, or an uncertain piece of dialogue. Alma asked for the removal of one shot in “Vertigo”, in which she felt Kim Novak's calves were too thick. It would seem that in their personal life, she was the Butch.)
Arguably the most iconic shot, scene and theme ever to incorporate the Golden Gate Bridge. photo: courtesy A. HitchcockAfter finally ejecting Midge from the car, Scottie ponders a catalog illustration of the Valdes portrait, imagining Mad in her place, as if he's starting to believe in this hokey haunting.
Reporting back to Elster, within the walls of his olde-world gentleman's club, Scottie is advised that Mad's taken to wearing Carlotta's jewelry, and has no knowledge of her great-grandmother. Scottie accepts another a drink.
Many HC flicks feature leads tortured and controlled by dead parents, but here a non-existent character is pretending to be under the power of a great-grandmother she knows nothing of; a bit of a mess, Eh?
The next day, Scottie's starkly-pointed DeSoto follows Mad's rounder Jaguar to Fort Point, the 19th century military base beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. After throwing petals from her bouquet into the bay, she jumps in after them, presumably seeking a wet grave. Did Elster research whether or not Scottie was a good swimmer? We'll never know, but into the drink he goes, believing he's saving The Girl. He fishes her out of the no doubt freezing water (over and over during the shooting, according to set lore—possibly as punishment for Novak having too many adamant ideas of her own about costuming).
Scottie's now holding Madeleine closely in the front seat of her car. She appears to be in a trance, barely opening her eyes. As his face nears her's (for a ménage a trois with the viewer, similar to that in "Rear Window" with the same actor and Grace Kelly as love-interest "Lisa Fremont"), desperately intoning her name, he seems to be quite disturbed.
Interior; Scottie's apartment: he's waiting expectantly in the cozy living room with a beautifully-lit Coit Tower visible through the picture window. A slow pan left shows that Madeleine's clothing, including her under-garments, are hanging in his kitchen to dry. We realize the layout here is similar to the apartment of Stewart's earlier character, Jeffries, in "Rear Window". Continuing the pan, Mad's found, presumably in her birthday suit, under the covers of Scottie's bed.
The phone's in the bedroom, and it rings as Elster calls, ostensibly unaware of the circumstances. Scottie runs to answer it and Judy appears to awaken with a start, as Madeleine. Soon, in his robe, she's sitting on pillows in front of the fireplace. She asks him to fetch her purse. Occasionally a Hitchcockian male character will find himself carrying a woman's purse. "Dial M For Murder" (1954) has a bobby holding the heroine's purse, as evidence he's taking to the station. In this case, the purpose is a continuing of Scottie's humiliation.
A pregnant moment occurs as he comes near; suddenly they're more than just friends. The telephone rings and as Scottie begins a rise to answer it, she says in a bedroom voice—"I'm married you know". One must wonder how HC was able to slide this sequence past not only the censor, but also the Catholic Church and the Legion Of Decency. In the hands of any other filmmaker working during the repressive mid-fifties, this would not have been possible. Returning from the call he finds that Mad has again vanished.
Another day, Scottie's lurking outside of Madeleine's home, waiting to trail her. Doing so, he passes a parked doppelganger of his DeSoto, continuing the tightening of the circle, or noose around our hero's neck. She then takes him in a consternating serious of left and right turns, until they find themselves back at his apartment.
He acts as if he coincidentally has just returned himself. She has a thank you note. "I couldn't mail it," she explains, "I had to know your address... had a land mark, I remembered Coit Tower." "Well, that's the first time I've been grateful for Coit Tower", Scottie advises, as it looms upright in the background, appearing not to be an abstract symbol, but as a very specific icon; at this, its pivotal moment within the screenplay.
They decide to wander together. She's driving her Jaguar as he sits next to her in the middle of the wide front seat, looking a bit silly. They cross the Golden Gate Bridge, under of which they both recently got a dunking, into Marin County. They eventually find themselves in a Northern California redwood forest. We're now faced with “Vertigo”'s central, uber-circle—a giant tree section, bearing dates coinciding with its rings, going back to 909 A.D. Combined with the still-fresh memory of the above situation predicated on the size and strength of Coit Tower, this suggests a Freudian apocalypse. ("Coit," from the Latin, coitus.)
Their growing romance meets with the foggy and mysterious past in this lush setting, to create a moment that, although packed with meaning, is ultimately about the kind of mood and experience only cinema can provide; or at least that of Alfred Hitchcock. Despite the couple's increasing closeness, she manifests a zombie-like trance, thereby continuing the insinuation that “Vertigo” is a surrealistic horror movie, while also indicating that she's still effecting Elster's plan. Her presence is lost and again we're faced with a person-less shot.
Within many of his movies, HC will find a motivation to present an abstract shot, lacking any characters, to express absurdity. Here, it's part of a series providing a hint to Scottie that Mad is non-existent; he sadly fails to notice. He asks her when she was born and where she goes. Answering as Judy (unbeknownst to him), she begs him to stop and take her out of the darkness.
Cut to a new scene next to a tumultuous Pacific Ocean with windswept trees (leading one's location-scout section of the mind to suspect this was shot south of SF, along the Monterey Peninsula, as opposed to east of the redwood forest). Harking back to HC's "Spellbound" (1945), with psychiatrist Dr. Constance Peterson having John Ballantine describe a nightmare for clues regarding his amnesia; and looking forward to "Marnie'''s (1964) amateur psycho-analysis, Mad confesses a bizarre dream for Scottie's interpretation.
"It's as though I'm walking along a long, long corridor that was once mirrored and fragments of that mirror still hang there," she says. "When I come to the end of that corridor, there's nothing but darkness and I know that when I go into that darkness I'll die."
The meaning and effect of this particular dream-telling is different from that of the earlier film, as here it's integral to Elster's evil scheme, that our erstwhile detective is apparently unable to suss. Hesitatingly, she then talks of sitting alone in a room, looking into a fresh grave that's her's, and of a tower with a bell, which could be in Spain.
We'll continue our close look at “Vertigo”, possibly Hitchcock's most complex and meaningful film, in the next issue of CineSource.
Posted on Feb 01, 2012 - 11:24 AM
