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Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) - Coggle Diagram
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Auteur
Cinematography
God's Eye View
- Used in North by Northwest (1959) and The Birds (1963)
- High angle shot of Scottie leaving the church after Madeleine has died - emphasises his size compared to the huge church, represents his vulnerability
Subjective camerawork
- Many eyeline matches encourage audience identification with Scottie - used in Trailing Madeleine scene
Themes
Catholic Guilt
- Influenced by Hitchcock's Catholic upbringing and education
- Idea of guilt due to God's judgement of sins
- Madeleine is shocked by the nun at the top of the church and falls to her dead - represents God's judgement of Madeleine's sins
'The Wrong Man'
- Influenced by Hitchcock's fear of authority, the police, and false convictions
- Theme of mistaken identity - seen in North by Northwest and The Wrong Man (1956)
- Seen in Madeleine/Judy character
Voyeurism
- Seen in Rear Window (1954)
- Seen in Trailing Madeleine scene
- First seen in Ernie's restaurant scene, and the flower shop scene
- Encourages tension and uncomfortable sense for the audience
Sexual Taboo
- Suggestion of necrophilia
- Seen in Psycho (1960) - theme of incest
Pure Cinema
- Visual storytelling absent of dialogue - seen in Trailing Madeleine scene
German Expressionism
- Characters' internal feelings are emphasised through performance and set
- Seen in 360 degree pan of Scottie and Madeleine kissing, reflects Scottie's psychology
Soviet Cinema
- Soviet Montage - montage of shots as Scottie realises Madeleine's false identity (also pure cinema as no dialogue)
- Kuleshov effect - seen in Trailing Madeleine - shots between Scottie's face and Madeleine's car
Creative Control
- Hitchcock was a 'free agent' and a celebrity director
- He self-produced many of his films
- He had cameos in many of his films to 'brand' them
- He had his own signature logo which he used
- He became a personality director, appearing in his film trailers and hosting his own TV show 'Alfred Hitchcock presents'
Vertigo effect shot
- Dolly zoom, used to create disorientating effect
- Example of German Expressionism - seen through Scottie's eyes, conveying his inner feelings
- Used when Scottie is climbing the stairs in the church, also when Scottie is hanging from the building in the opening
Characters
Flawed characters - Scottie's femininity
- Emasculated, impotent, powerless male characters
- Seen in Rear Window, Scottie's acrophobia - non-heroic characters
- Scottie describes himself as wearing a corset - feminines and emasculates him
- His walking stock is used to emphasise his impotence at the start of the film
- Scottie's feminisation represents his male/sexual impotence
Hitchcock Blondes
- Mysterious, cold female characters - Madeleine is the archetypal Hitchcock Blonde - represented through her often complex or mysterious dialogue
- Green fog filters used over Madeleine to emphasise her mysterious, ghostly nature
- Scottie's control over Judy is representative of Hitchcock's own control over his actresses and their appearances, costume etc - represents reflexivity of Vertigo
Suspense
- Created in the scene where Judy turns to the camera and breaks the fourth wall, the flashback of Madeleine confirms to the audience Judy is Madeleine prior to Scottie, creating suspense
Hitchcock as Auteur
Hitchcock as Auteur
Recurring themes include:
- Freudian psychoanalysts (Vertigo's emphasis on dreams, falling, repression)
- Exploration of voyeurism (Rear Window)
- Punishment and objectification of women
- Impotent masculinity
- 'Catholic guilt', shame and punishment of sin (I Confess)
- Mistaken/false identity (North by Northwest)
- False convictions/wrongly accused (The Wrong Man)
- Expressionistic approaches to conveying inner states of mind and emotion (Psycho and Rear Window)
Criticisms
- Importance of significant creative partners - Bernard Herrman (composer), Saul Bass (titles designer/created dream sequence), John Ferren (created dream sequence), Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor (screenwriters), and Edith Head (costume designer, also had important influence on the film's lighting/colour and overall style)
Context
Institutional
- Demise of studio system in 1950s led to more directorial freedom and creative control
- Kim Novak was under contract with Columbia Pictures and only starred in Vertigo with permission of Columbia chief
Technological
- Use of Paramount's wide screen process 'VistaVision', created in 1954
Political
- USA's involvement in Cold War with the Soviet Union, use of nuclear deterrents on both sides
- Fear of spread of communism (red scare/McCarthyism)
Social
- 1950s America - social and institutional racism - a segregated American society - end of the decade saw beginning of civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s
- Film can be read as emblematic of men trying to reassert control over women in post-war America - seen when Scottie asks Judy not to go to work and instead spend time with him "Let me take care of you"
- Hitchcock was influenced by German Expressionism and Soviet Montage cinema - elaborate editing techniques inspired by soviet films of the 1920s
- Acknowledged significance of Kuleshov effect, which inspired Hitchcock's use of POV shots, and inspired him to build sequences by cross-cutting between person seeing and things seen
- Hitchcock exploited his 'auteur' status as a marketing device - making him a star/celebrity director
- He also 'signed' his films through his personal non-speaking appearances or cameos in them
- Vertigo features recurring motifs/themes of Hitchcock's other films: guilt (Strangers on a Train), voyeurism (Rear Window), and taboo subject matter (Pyscho)
- Vertigo's themes have been viewed as revealing and personal to Hitchcock: representation of Scottie as lonely links to Hitchcock's lack of childhood friends, Scottie's treatment of Judy could reflect how Hitchcock treated actresses he worked with, and the guilt Scottie experiences could be linked to Hitchcock's Catholic upbringing
- Vertigo's spy/surveillance theme is representative of the suspicion and paranoia of the 1940s/50s due to the Red Scare/McCarthyism - particularly represented by Elster enlisting Scottie to spy on Madeleine
- The Hays Code meant Hitchcock was required to produce films upholding a 'positive moral framework' which sees characters punished for immoral acts - the alternate ending upon re-release by Paramount honoured these restrictions
- In 1958, the classical Hollywood studio system was coming to an end and auteur directors such as Hitchcock were adopting more experimental approaches - Vertigo reflects this as its part Classical Hollywood genre thriller and part daring psychological study with many expressive features (Vertigo effect, nightmare sequence etc)
- Scottie's morally ambiguous character and the 'Undressing Madeleine' scene were Hitchcock's rebellions against the restrictions of the Hays Code - therefore Hitchcock demonstrated the waning influence of the Code throughout the 1950s
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Classical Hollywood
- US cinema production between 1930s-1960s
- Dominated by big five studios who controlled film production and distribution (20th Century Fox, MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount and RKO)
- Vertically integrated and formed an oligopoly - industry dominated by a small number of sellers
- Actors contracted to specific studios - actors given roles, image controlled and typecast by studio
Stylistic traits
- Continued to experiment with camera angle, distance and movement, but continued to use continuity editing to create an easy to understand, fluid narrative
- David Bordwell identified two main areas of Classical Hollywood style: devices and systems
Devices
- Continuity editing - match-on-match action, shot-reverse-shot, 180-degree rule ensures actions 'flow' between shots
- Cross cutting between action in different locations to expand 'cinema space' beyond two dimensional space
- Objective cinematography - establishing and master shots to establish space - lots of medium shots, over the shoulder POV, functional rather than expressionistic cinematography
- Composition places human facial expressions and gestures at centre of frame
- Synchronous sound to convey meaning through dialogue, realism through foley sound - dramatic, incidental music to convey characters emotions
Systems
- Linear, chronological narrative structure of plot - time moves in uniform way (except for clearly indicated flashbacks)
- Clear and simple narrative logic - events obeying cause and effect
- Goal-orientated characters with clear and realistic psychological motivations
- Cinematic space created through composition - centring (characters in centre of frame), balancing (symmetry between characters on screen), depth (foreground and background), directed as if they are addressing the spectator
Themes
Gender
Masculinity
- The opening sequence where Scottie is hanging from the building represents his fall from hegemonic masculinity (the accepted standards by which a man's dominance is maintained in society over women)
- Scottie is emasculated by his trauma eg his vertigo and being out of work
- He decides to 'save' Madeleine/Judy in order to regain his masculinity and dominance over women
- Laura Mulvey would argue that this is maintained through images of male voyeurism and scopophilia, where the gaze of the viewer is centred around the gaze of men on film
- Madeleine/Judy is placed as an object of Scottie's passion and she becomes the object that releases him from his loss of masculine hegemony
- Scottie 'castrates' himself through his acrophobia and subsequent loss of his job, as he longer perform the masculine duty of the male protagonist detective
- Madeleine/Judy is often framed in high angle shots, highlighting her sexual hold over Scottie and her subordinate position to him, even in his weakened position within the confines of his masculinity
- During the final sequence, Scottie reaches the top of the bell tower, where he is forced to face his vertigo and acrophobia (representing his emasculation), which serves a phallic symbol of reversing the castration
- Madeleine/Judy becomes frightened by a dark figure in the corner of the tower, and severe guilt seems to drive her to her death
- Madeleine/Judy's death represents Scottie regaining his hegemonic masculine role, which is reinforced by Hitchcock's use of low angle shots to frame him
Carlotta Valdes
- Carlotta's character is both necessary and ornamental, she drives the plot forward by both appearing and not appearing
- She is introduced as a painting hanging in a museum - something to be gazed at
Midge
- Midge, who secretly still loves Scottie (but is presented as motherly love), attempts to undermine Madeleine's romantic narrative with Scottie, and is continuously shot from high angles, representing her inferiority
- This places Midge, a woman enthralled by Scottie and his masculine role as a detective, in a role subservient to the protagonist