Wow, that was simply amazing. I’m going to be honest, though. I’ve seen Vertigo twice before this class and I hated it both times. It seemed like a movie about a horrible detective (I mean he follows her very closely all the time and stands no more than 20 feet away from her) and there was an abrupt ending. I got the theme that you can’t escape the past but other than that it didn’t seem that deep. But oh how horribly wrong I was. Dr. Campbell’s thorough analysis of the opening title sequence was a warm welcome and reminded me of the old 245 days. Lately I have felt like the class isn’t really analyzing films specifically and it’s been a little frustrating.
Anyway, what interested me most throughout Vertigo was the composition of certain shots. From the beginning of the film, thanks to Dr. C for pointing it out to me, there is a centrality of focus put in the middle of the frame. This becomes evident with the pupil in the eye of the unknown woman. Throughout the beginning of the film, as Scottie follows Madeleine, his destination and concentration lies in the middle of the frame. When he follows her into the museum, the entrance is in the middle. Another example is when he tries to follow Madeleine up the stairs of the tower and looks straight down. Here Hitchcock uses his created “Vertigo” technique where he zooms the camera lens in as he tracks the camera backwards. It makes the audience feel like they are falling from the screen. Because the opening title shot focuses on the middle of the eye, that is one of the goals if not the goal of the film: to go into the uknown that is the human soul.
Being a Kubrick fan I can’t help but relate the similarities 2001: A Space Odyssey has to this film. Here are a few screenshots from 2001.
But hey, if I were to spend a lot of time on Vertigo and 2001 I could call that a career. Both are thought provoking films but they’re about the same things. Notice that HAL, the red eye, does not have that deep unknown. It’s red and it doesn’t move around. They tried to make it human and although it does have a more human voice, it lacks that personal quality of the eyes. The third 2001 photo occurs during Dave’s journey beyond the infinite. Hmmm sounds a lot like looking into someone’s soul. Is there an end to it? Can we really know everything about someone or even ourselves?
This theme is continued in the text of the title sequence in Veritgo. Notice in the second Vertigo picture, that the title has a white stencil outline but a transparent center. It’s a continuation of looking past the surface of someone or something and trying to find something deeper in it. Almost like how the shot begins with the outer beauty of the unknown female and eventually ends up at the one eye. The whole plot of the film is the surface of what it really is about. That’s why so many people usually don’t like it at first. The entire plot is merely the MacGuffin as Dr. C told us and it finally makes sense to me.
That’s just a few things that I noticed and would like to expand on in class. I hope to God we have an extended class session on the dream sequence. There is so much going on there!