Vertigo is defined as the sensation of movement which is subjective movement, and as the perception of movement which is objective movement. Vertigo can be caused by a problem with the vestibular system of the inner ear or by an abnormality in the brainstem.  Among other things, vertigo can occur as a result of the brain’s failure to integrate visual stimuli. It is mistakenly referred to as a fear of heights because of false etymology in the word vertical.  Medical experts estimate that there are approximately forty different types of vertigo.  Most of us have experienced vertigo at some point in our lives.  Vertigo only becomes a problem when it is chronic.  Acute cases of vertigo feel more intense and seem to be more serious.  However, they are not.  In the same way, chronic vertigo feels less serious than it really is.  So, it is better to have acute vertigo for a short while rather than chronic vertigo for a short spell.  I would prefer to have neither.  Poor Scottie had both.  That is, he had acute vertigo regarding his fear of heights, and chronic vertigo in that he was paralyzed by his love Madeline/Carlotta/Judy.  In the scene I analyze in a little bit, the viewer may get vertigo upon watching the scene in reverse at 2x the normal speed.  Judy’s head actually bobs and weaves in a regular rhythm as the camera follows her.  It feels as if the camera operator is on a slow-moving merry-go-round revolving around Judy.  

Like a lot of others in the class, I am intrigued by Vertigo.  Hitchcock creates a very haunting and scary world in which nothing is as it seems, but yet those who should know what they are seeing do not.  They are the ones most willing to suspend belief in order to see what they want to see.  Like the symptom by the same name, they are spinning out of control in the movie.  But wait a minute, they are not really spinning out of control, they just think they are.  Or maybe they feel like they are spinning but know they are not and know they have vertigo.  My head is spinning with the possibilities.  How can one movie that seems so straight forward on the surface conjure up such difficult and contradictory questions?   Of course now it seems obvious that Madeline was really Judy and not Carlotta.  But at the time, I earnestly believed that Madeline sincerely thought she was Carlotta.  My expectation was that Madeline would have turned out to be as crazy as Gavin Elster wanted us to believe she was or that she was the victim of some evil plot on her husband’s behalf.  The other part of me was hoping Vertigo would turn out to be a chilling ghost story or a horror movie.  Even up to the point where it is revealed that Elster hired Janet to double for Madeline, I still held out hope for a crazy, twisted ending that would leave me delightfully terrified and forever haunted.  How I hoped for that indescribable sensation of being scared senseless.  It never happened that way.  Instead, I was left with a lot of questions.  Who did Scottie expect to find when he came to Judy’s room?  Did he really love Madeline?  Why did Judy let Scottie into her room?  After all, she could have ordered him out and things would have ended right there.  Of course an alternate ending would have been needed, but maybe Scottie would have found happiness. 

I feel compelled and maybe even obsessed to analyze this scene.  I think that if I can look at it critically and maybe even logically if that is possible, then I can have a little resolution in a movie that leaves more questions unanswered than ones it answers.  In the letter Judy writes to Scottie she says, “I’m still in love with you and I want you so to love me.  If I had the nerve, I’d stay and lie, hoping that I could make you love me again.”  This entire quote bothers me because it is filled with incongruities and lies.  If Judy had the nerve, she would stay and lie and make Scottie fall in love with her again?  The braver course of action would have been to leave and give poor Scottie the peace of mind she claims to want for him.  When you love someone, you want what is best for them and what is going to make them happy.  You certainly do not continue to betray them with more lies.  Judy’s love is a selfish love in that she loves the idea of being in love and making Scottie love her.  She proved her acting abilities by passing for Madeline and getting Scottie to fall in love with her in the first place.

What I am about to say may seem like a stretch but please bear with me.  This part of the film where Judy reads the letter to Scottie as she is writing it could be considered a ‘weepie.’  I am not suggesting that the entire film fits this mold, just that this particular scene has ‘weepie’ elements.  In Robin Wood’s essay, Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess, she states, “These are films addressed to women in their traditional status under patriarchy-as wives, mothers, abandoned lovers, or in their traditional status as bodily hysteria or excess as in the frequent case of the woman “afflicted” with a deadly or debilitating disease.”  What fits here is the notion of an abandoned lover and the affliction of a debilitating disease.  Brilliantly, Hitchcock constructs simultaneous real and quasi-real realities but inverts the gender roles.  Scottie has the debilitating disease with his acrophobia.  He is literally unable to save Madeline because he cannot climb up the stairs of the tower.  His acrophobia debilitates him physically, but cripples him emotionally and mentally because of the extreme sadness he endures as he recovers from Madeline’s death and his inability to save her.  At the same time, Judy ponders the idea of revealing the truth to Scottie and leaving him.  She abandons this idea though almost instantaneously.  At first I did not witness this transition that takes the form of Judy rejecting the idea of leaving Scottie and running away.  This transformation amazes me in the speed with which it happens and with the decisiveness in which it happens as well.  I just need to give a little background before I can launch into Judy’s amazing transformation.  The camera moves ever so slowly but continually around her as it finally comes to rest on Judy’s face as she talks about how Elster planned his crime so well.  As Judy writes the letter her eyes are downcast.  She looks up occasionally as she thinks over some idea she has trouble with.  For example, she says “He planned it so well.  He made no mistakes.  I made the mistake.  I fell in love.  Between the time when she says, “He made no mistakes,” and “I made the mistake,” Judy looks up.  A look comes over her face.  There is the slightest glint of transformation in her eyes.  She is making a small transition at this point.  Though, she does fluctuate between Judy and this new person trying to emerge.  A few lines later she says, “But I don’t know whether I have the nerve to try.”  This time her gaze is decidedly changed.  She is resolved.  Whoever this new person waiting to emerge from her cocoon is, she has now become the same.  Again, she looks up.  However, Judy is now the “New Judy[i].”  She never looks down again after saying, “I don’t know if I had the nerve to try.”  At this point the transformation is complete.  Her eyes open wider as if with sudden cognition of her transformation.  Also at this point, the music changes from rather mournfully appropriate, to music that reaches its crescendo as I declare that the transformation is complete and irreversible.  This next shot amazes me, captivates me and haunts me in its ability to turn the tide of the entire movie.  Judy very deliberately stands up and backs away from the desk.  It is as if she is distancing herself from herself.  She gets a look of determination as she stands up straighter and squares her shoulders.  As with the manner in which rose and backed away from the desk, she now begins to deliberately and determinedly tear up the letter.  She tears the letter twice but cannot tear it the third time and so she quickly decides to dispose of it in the wastebasket.  As she walks over to the bed to begin putting away her clothes, the music begins again.  However this time, it immediately sounds louder, more convincing and more athletic, if that makes sense.  This time Judy moves with a sense of purpose as returns her clothes to the closet.  She is putting everything in its place, especially the grey suit which she relocates to the back of the closet.  This screams out in its significance as it tells the viewer that she is Madeline no more.  She is literally putting away her past by shoving it to the back of the closet.

Wood goes on to state that … “there is a spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion.”  Here, Judy is caught in the grip of intense emotion as she transitions from Judy to someone that I am not sure who she was.  Maybe it was Madeline, but I propose it was a hybrid cross between the two women.  This display of emotion is not the same as the ‘tear jerker’ that a modern audience would recognize as such.  In its place is intense emotion more in the nature of fierce determination.  The demonstrative qualities are subtle, but powerful once they can be honed in on.  There is just something about Kim Novak’s eyes that communicate more than words could ever say.  Novak’s body really is a spectacle.  She creates a sense of vertigo with her ability to change, like a chameleon, between two distinct personae.

Judy bypasses a red dress first and quickly moves on to a brown one.  Though she is rushing through her closet, she is actually making snap decisions about what to wear.  Women always do this.  We can look at an outfit and make a judgment regarding its suitability or our desire to wear it for a particular occasion in an instant.  She finally settles on a purple dress.  The choice of a purple dress is interesting.  It seems that color plays an important role in this Hitchcock film.  In fact, Serena mentions the treatment of Hitchcock’s use of color in Vertigo by film critics.  Her post discusses green and red as important and I can certainly see that.  However, I think the color purple is overlooked in its importance and what it conveys about Judy.  Purple is an important color choice because it can represent competing sentiments.  It has traditionally been used by the Roman Catholic Church to represent holiness as well as sorrow and suffering.  Kings and queens have adopted it as the color of royalty perhaps because it was rare because it was difficult to produce.  It has been used to refer to things majestic as in ‘purple mountains’ majesty’ in America the Beautiful. Also,  purple symbolizes love and success.  Finally, it symbolizes mediation.  So, what did purple symbolize for Madeline in Vertigo? 

Madeline’s purple dress signified a fresh start, as in the fresh start of spring.  Her purple dress signified a way to recapture the love Scottie once felt for her when he thought she was Madeline.  It is interesting how once she selected the dress from among all the others, she took it out, draped one side of the top part of the dress over the hanger and then clutched the entire dress tightly to her body.  Women reserve this move for clothing they are extremely attached to or ones that hold out promise for great things.  For example, a wedding dress or a prom dress or some other special occasion dress would be treated the same way.  It is not that a woman really loves the inanimate object.  Instead, what she connects to is the promise the clothing represents.  A wedding dress promises a life of happiness.  While a prom dress or other dress promises a night of something special.  These dresses have the power to create memories.  That is what Judy is responding to in the purple dress.

Assuming that Judy is holding out hope that she can make a fresh beginning with Scottie then maybe the purple dress is the best choice.  All at once Judy can be majestic and commanding while conveying suffering and sorrow at the same time.  I like this idea because it puts Judy in control of the relationship, rather than Scottie which patriarchal conventions would dictate.  In talking about gender, Royale With Cheese states, “Judy had tied an invisible rope around Scottie and, as we stated in class, she led him where she wanted him to go. Or rather, where she wanted to go with him.” Scottie thinks he is controlling the situation but is he really?  Was Scottie ever controlling things?  It seems pretty easy to sit back now and say of course he was not.  He was never controlling anything or anyone.  He was just a puppet.  Of course he was, but it is impossible to know this when watching the film for the first time.  Judy did indeed have an invisible rope tied around Scottie’s waist.  She used it to lead him around where she needed him to go.  She is still using it now to lead Scottie into new territory.  By that I mean she is using it lead Scottie into loving her.  Perhaps she embodies some the ‘Super Female’ traits as Molly Haskell discusses in her essay, From Reverance to Rape: Female Stars of the 1940s.  Judy does use her femininity to lure Scottie into believing she is Madeline.  Again, she uses her femininity to try to hold on to Scottie because she loves him.  That is, she loves him as Judy and not Madeline.  Indeed, I find Judy to be “… exceedingly feminine and flirtatious, too ambitious and intelligent for the docile role society has decreed she play.”  She has no choice but to turn her energies on the people in her world with demonic results.  The demonic results manifest in Scottie’s mental breakdown and in her eventual suicide.  Additionally, it can be surmised that Scottie will either wind up the victim of another breakdown and perhaps in a catatonic state for the rest of his life, or he will wind up in prison for the rest of his life. Either way the results are demonic, sad and tragic.

Christine echoes this sentiment in her post.  She talks about Judy/Madeline fitting the description of the Super Female.  And obviously she does.  However, I  do not see Judy being in transition from a Super Female to a Super Woman.  Judy/Madeline possesses none of the angularity or androgyny necessary to be a Super Woman.

Like Robyn, I too agree with Mary Carolyn’sideas about Midge being willing to mold herself into what Scotty wants.  She seems to still be pining for Scottie.  After all, she goes to great trouble to literally paint herself into Scottie’s world.  The Midge/Carlotta picture is a sheer stroke of genius.  She cannot help the fact that Scottie does not like it because he has been sucked into the dysfunctionality that is Madeline/Judy/Carlotta.  Now throw Midge into the mix.  Wow, you have a recipe for a huge cat-fight.  I think Mary Carolyn’s observation is very astute.  I had not seen it this way until I read her post.  But she is right on.

Lookin’s blog talks about manipulation via music.  I had not thought that I would use a post like this in construction my analysis of Vertigo, but it fits right in.  As previously mentioned, Hitchcock or Hermann (the person in charge of the score) uses music to further the impact of the movie.  The music builds to a crescendo when Judy decides to stay and fight for Scottie.  After that the music is decidedly more forceful.  It is as if the music is driving the plot at this point.  It sends a powerful message to the viewer if he is tuned in to the aural experience of the film.  If he is not then he is missing out on an integral part of the film-going experience.

[i] At this point on I will refer to the “New Judy” as just Judy but please know that I am referring to the Judy that has emerged from her cocoon after writing the Dear John letter.

 Like Scottie, Eben was powerless to regin in his feelings.  I agree with Robyn that Eben was in love with the idea of being inspired.  It doesn’t even matter any more whether or not Jennie was real because he too was in love with an idea.  He was in love with the idea of a woman transcending time to be with him.  Scottie was also in love with this notion except that Scottie was in love with a woman that did not exist. 

Scottie and Eben are actors playing imaginary people.  But, how easily could any of us fall into that trap?  That notion is terrifying.  With a little imagination any of us could become Eben or Scottie falling into the trap of loving someone or something that doesn’t exist. 

I say no.  One may not like a work of art or respond to it in a favorable manner.  But that does not mean it’s superficial.  Any time an artist creates, he/she is giving up a little piece of his identity.  He’s telling you, “This is who I am.”  If you call his work superficial simply because you don’t have an emotional response to it is tantamount to denying his right to express himself and thus negating his existence.  For me, art is a means of expressing oneself and affirming a common humanity. 

There are other aspects to a work of art to admire or recognize.  One aspect is the talent it took to create it.  By that I mean brush strokes, the use of color, focus, attention to details, the choice of medium, etc… .  If you’ve ever watched an artist paint, draw or create anything, you know what I mean.  They make it look so effortless.  Back to my mom, she can sit down with a crayon and a piece of kid’s construction paper and make images appear.  It’s truly magic.  I’m always amazed at the way things seem to spring to life.  However, she is always tinkering with it.  She adds this or that to it and makes her creation even lovelier.  I’m usually happy with her initial creation but she always says she could make it better. 

I love art and would love to be an artist myself.  Believe me I have tried and the results are always diasterous.  I respect artists and the process they go through in creating their art.  It is truly a gift.  Maybe they know this and want to share it with the world.  Maybe they just have a need to share themselves.  Whatever their motivation is sharing their creations, I’m glad they do.  Without art, the world would be dull and lifeless.  What is important to me is that they keep sharing it.  It’s okay not to like everything.  However for me it is important to respect the artistic process.       

What I can’t imagine is what gives one person the right to decide that he has the right to end a life.  I can’t imagine why he/she thinks he has the right to rob survivors of the joy of their loved ones.  I can’t imagine the pain and suffering the victims families must be going through.

I have a niece at Tech and was so relieved to find out that she was safe in her apartment.   

I hope to find my English Muffin someday, and when I do, I’m going to slather him and butter and raspberry preserves.

Adorno posited that Art has become commodified because now it is so cheap that everyone can afford it.  Once the masses can afford a mass-produced copy of Monet’s “Waterlillies” or VanGogh’s “Scream,” then art has lost its true essence.  However he did acknowledge that during the Renaissance art was commissioned by the nobility. 

It is curious that Mr. Mathews tells Eben to paint people  because they reflect time, while Mrs. Spinney tells him to paint churches and flowers.  Eben has no problem parting with the churches and flowers but holds on to the portrait of Jennie until he absolutely needs the money.  The money he gets from the sale of Jennie feeds his body while the portrait feeds his soul.  Artists must be so territorial over their art for this very reason.  It feeds their soul.  If the portrait of Jennie fed his soul then does that make them soulmates?  If so, then why couldn’t they be together?