Just like there are comic’s comics, there are films meant for aspiring film practitioners rather than an audience. Alfred Hitchcock’sVertigois certainly one of them. On the first watch, the plot of the film feels inorganic, and the film ends on an abrupt note, confusing one to feel neither invested nor cheated by the story. However, the unsettling aura of the film lingers on and one revisits the film to investigate what the film stood for.
Fortunately, there is enough literature by film theorists and institutions that aid film enthusiasts in understanding the latent motives of the poignant film that enriches the experience of watchingVertigo. Film Institutions go beyond the technical understanding of filmmaking and explore the essence of a story and its motives for being turned into a film. Aptly titledVertigo,the film is entirely a state of mind and a cut-throat commentary on the male fantasy hanging on an excuse of a plot to express itself.
Vertigorevolves around John Ferguson, aka Scottie, who is a detective suffering from vertigo after witnessing an officer fall from a high-rise building. Scottie is asked by his acquaintance to follow his wife, Madeline, for showing strange behavior, who too presumably jumps from a height and commits suicide as Scottie witnesses it.Scottie is devastatedsince he fell in love with Madeline. Later, Scottie stumbles on Judy who resembles Madeline and is obsessed with her appearance, and tries everything possible to make her look like Madeline. Unfortunately, as the truth comes to the surface, Scottie questions everything he knew about Madeline and her husband.
Film Schools Love Vertigo’s Inventive Storytelling
It should be noted that the film could have been easily named Stalker or Peeping Tom but was titledVertigoinstead, indicatingHitchcock’s clear intention in making a filmthat is unsettling to the mind. Scottie’s vertigo becomes integral to the story as it hinders his investigation and leads to the death of a woman. The film was the first to incorporate the use of dolly zoom, where the camera moves backward while zooming into a shot and vice versa, creating the experience of moving forward and backward at the same time. This aided in understanding Scottie’s state of mind not only in terms of his illness but the warped understanding of women.
The film uses color saturation to create the dream-like world Madeline lives in.The color composition of San Franciscomakes the city look otherworldly and too picturesque to be true. Madeline wears gray contrasting with her background which is brightly lit, expressing the colorless life Madeline lives in, while she is expected to complement the vibrancy of her surroundings. The film does not rely on verbal exposition in indicating the underlying state of the characters.Vertigois metaphorical at its best in contextualizing the complex motives behind its characters as vulnerable and manipulative human beings. The music by Bernard Herrmann creates an eerie immersive experience, revealing the unreliable actions of the characters.Vertigois about sexuality and necrophiliabut poignantly does so by only implying it through symbolism.
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Vertigo Criticizes the Male Fantasy in Filmmaking
Once it is revealed that the actions of Madeline were only a ruse to trap Scottie, the film turns on Scottie’s character and questions his intentions of following Madeline along the city. However, Madeline not only deliberately fabricated her mystique, appearance, and beauty to trap the character of Scottie but also the audience who is equally convinced about Madeline’s troubled mind just as Scottie.
Hitchcock takes a bold stancein confronting the conventional male protagonist’s obsession with troubled women in films and the audience’s voyeuristic obsession with seeing a man stalk a woman in the film. Madeline is the representation of the male fantasy and is designed for the sole purpose to be looked at, which film academic Laura Mulvey conceptualized as the male gaze which has been integral in studyingfemale representation in cinema.
Hitchcock does not stop here. The filmmaker critiques on what happens when a man tries to make his fantasy real in women when he obsesses over Madeline’s looks and wants Judy to look like her. The whole point is, Madeline never really existed, andher personality was fabricated for Scottie’s pleasure. As Judy changes herself to Madeline, she loses her self-identity in order to be fully accepted by Scottie. He never accepts the support given by Midge, as she is too real and uncomplicated and lacks the glamour and the puzzling appeal of Madeline to intrigue Scottie’s interest. The film makes an important commentary on the consequences of women losing their identity for male acceptance, which is extensively studied in film schools.
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Scottie is Alfred Hitchcock
The film goes several steps further in criticizing its own maker. Alfred Hitchcock is known for his obsession with blonde female characters, who often fall in trouble for breaking norms. Scottie in many ways resembles Hitchcock’s outlook in hisfemale characters who are visually appealingand fall into the wrong hands, often by men who are obsessed with their looks. This choice is groundbreaking as Hitchcock mastered manipulating the audience, but in the second half ofVertigo,Hitchcock subverts his own filmography. Here, the woman tricks the male characters and the audience on the basis of her appearance instead of being tricked.
However, in true Hitchcockian style, the film ends in surrendering the woman of her agency, reminding there is always a price to pay forwomen for not choosing to fit in a male-centric world. The world of film schools remains fascinated by how artists critique their own work and are aware of their positions when they write a character. Hitchcock’sVertigowas far ahead of its time for being self-reflective of the director’s own obsessions and the impact of male-centric storytelling on women.
