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VERTIGO - CONTEXT / AUTEUR DEBATE - Coggle Diagram
VERTIGO - CONTEXT / AUTEUR DEBATE
POST WW2 AMERICA
Economic boom
America recovered extremely successfully after WW2, leading to a new golden age of America
Major boost of 50s Americana iconography (eg diners, cool cars, Elvis)
Rise of the teenager
The idea of power to the youth, and that you don't have to listen to parents or the system. This was because they shared different ideals from the parents, and that teenagers got lots of money from the great boom
Majorly influenced by Rebel Without A Cause, starring James Dean
Perfect housewife / toxic masculinity
The 50s are synonymous with the mistreatment of women, and the control that they have over women
The hatred towards women was boosted because of the fact that women took over a lot of the jobs in society that men had
Eg femme fatale, or Madeline / Judy
Spawned toxic / fragile masculinity, male identity crisis, emasculation of women, and castration anxiety
This prompted male businessmen to create the perfect housewife stereotype to tell women "where they belong"
Fear of the other
Or, fear of anyone that's not an old straight white capitalist able male that benefits from the patriarchy, thinks freely or thinks that war is a bad idea
This spawned the civil rights movement that became big and effective in the 60s
Notable in Vertigo through the lack of coloured people
Scottie can be seen as a manipulative misogynist through the way that he treats Judy, falls for silent and passive Madeline, and the fact that
he doesn't go for Midge that asshole!!! >:(
Vertigo can be seen as a confession from Hitch about his obsession for blondes in his work, because a good blonde friend of him went away, and he wishes to have her back
THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM
The
golden age of Hollywood
was from mid 1920s to early 50s
Studios provided audiences with
spectacle
,
glomour
and
entertainment
Companies used
vertical integration
, a technique of controlling all stages of production (production, distribution, exhibition)
An
Oligopoly
: where the market is controlled by a small number of companies
The big 5:
Warner Bros
RKO
Paramount
MGM
20th Century Fox
The little 3:
Universal
United Artists
Columbia
Creative control: studios > directors / actors
The only way that actors could work for a studio was for a
7 year contract
for a studio: they could only work for them, their roles were assigned to them, and they were almost always typecast
The contract also meant that studios had a major control over the actors: they had final say about how they should look and act in the public eye, and abuse was common, especially towards women
Assembly line films
: they were very formulaic, and every studio had their own trademarks and genres that they would constantly reuse and become synonymous with the studio
The great depression
allowed for smaller studios to go bust, and for bigger ones to increase their control over the entertainment industry
Block booking
: when an independent cinema chain requests for one A movie (eg Gone With The Wind) that will guarantee box office success, the studio also offers several B movies as well, that the cinema must also exhibit.
Blind Bidding
: when cinemas are buying a film, they have no idea what other cinemas are being sold, allowing for studios to control cinemas for however they see fit.
Hays code
A series of censorship laws to "protect the moral fibre of the audience"
No swearing, adultery, drugs or explicit violence, sympathetic villains or the moral high ground losing
Hitch worked around the code in the famous kiss from his film Notorious, where the characters kissed was broken up by talking or pauses instead of crossing the line of adultery
The Paramount decree and the end of the golden age
An antitrust law was requested by unaffiliated cinema owners in 1938 over their control over cinemas
Cinemas later won in 1948, meaning that studios had to give up their cinemas
Paramount was the first studio to do this, naming this law as The Paramount decree
The classic Hollywood look
3 point lighting
Shot-reverse-shot
Linear 3 act structure
Starting and ending scenes with a wide / establishing shot
Hollywood / American film was an
oliglopoly
An industry dominated by a few major companies / people
HITCH AS AN AUTEUR
Common trademarks
Voyeurism
The
taboo
/ forbidden /
fetishistic
Shock and crime
Hitchcock
blondes
Shadow self
McGuffins
Plot twists / mysteries
Sus
pense
Restricted POVs
Subconscious desires
Trademarks in
Vertigo
Blondes
: Madeline / Judy
Taboo
: Necrophilia / "she refuses to take her knickers off"
Shock and crime
: the death of Madeline and the reveal of Judy
Voyeurism
: "I want you to spy on my wife"
Shadow self
: The way that Scottie devolves into a villain at the end
McGuffins
: The Carlotta plot
Plot twist
: Madeline and Judy are the same person
Suspense
: The anxiously long takes, the scenes up the tower and the audience wondering how Scottie will react to the truth
Restricted POVs
: The fact that the whole film is from the perspective of Scottie
Subconscious desires
: gaslighting, sexual control, voyeurism and necrophilia
Hitch isn't solely responsible for the film:
Robert Burks
(cinematography)
Bernard Herrmann
(soundtrack)
George Tomasini
(editing)
Edith Head
(costume design, won 8 oscars, practically invented the Hitchcock blonde)
Saul Bass
(created the spiral design, 2D graphics and posters)
THE MALE GAZE
DEFINITION
: The way that men view women through an objectified and fetishistic lens, where all elements of form are assembled to tell audiences how a female character appears to a male character / director
ORIGIN
: from feminist filmmaker Laura Mulvey, from her 1975 book "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
IN VERTIGO:
The fact that Scottie takes mysterious, silent Madeline over funny, confident Midge
Active Scottie + Passive Mads
Talkative Midge is relegated to disappearing from the plot midway through the film
The first time we see Madeline, slowly creeping closer like a predator stalking it's prey, with her back to us showing midriff
The music "climaxes" at points when Scottie gets his erection
Madeline doesn't speak until 45 minutes in
The haunting, glamorous, emotional score that plays when Judy's onscreen
The overly objectified and one-dimensional dialogue that Madeline has
The final shot of the resurrection scene where Scottie is taller than Madeline???
The implications of necrophilia that Scottie does, and Scottie's toxic masculinity
Since most above the line jobs at Hollywood were mostly male, it meant that the way that they view women and their idea of a perfect women were very similar
Most 50s audiences were male, or at least the ones that had control and power compared to women were, and would likely connect with the male perspective better instead of female
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Woman is the image, man is the bearer of the look
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