On the Vertiginous Dualities of Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) is a film that is heavily reliant on a series of systematic dualities that inform and shape the picture's formal and thematic schema. This paper will be an attempt to catalogue as effectively as possible a few of the major instances of such dichotomy and its various functions in Hitchcock's picture: the paradoxically passive/aggressive nature of looking and seeing; the inherent difference and sameness of the sexes (which is in turn related to the matter of identification); and the simultaneous relinquishing of life and ascent to omnipresence that typifies the phenomenon of death and forever haunts the living.

Like Rear Window (1954), Vertigo is to some extent a picture 'about' cinema spectatorship; as many critics have pointed out, Scottie (like L. B. Jeffries in Rear Window; both characters played by James Stewart) is constructed by Hitchcock—namely through his exhaustive use of the POV shot—as a surrogate or stand-in for the audience member. This spectatorship, however—both Scottie's and the audience's—pivots on its dual nature: the act of looking is itself both active and passive at the same time. Scottie actively watches and (importantly) identifies with Madeleine (Kim Novak), just as the audience member actively watches and identifies with him (and, through him, with her); to see and register the cinematic image, therefore, puts one in an active position. (1) But it is not a completely active position, however: after all, both Jeffries and Scottie are emasculated men—weak and powerless as the coroner in Vertigo harshly puts it—and they are not in possession of the image; like the audience, they are unable to change or influence the flow of images that plays out front of them (this applies as much in Vertigo as it does in Rear Window, despite Scottie's apparent [but, as we shall see, in actual fact nonexistent] control over Judy [Kim Novak] in the film's final act). Jeffries, Scottie and the audience member are both active and passive in relation to other people's plans and images: they actively watch, but are ultimately—powerlessly—at the mercy of other people. (2)

Similarly, another of Vertigo 's numerous dualities is the aforementioned matter of Scottie's simultaneous identification and lack thereof with Madeleine and, by association, male identification and lack thereof with the female Other. In this respect, again, Vertigo and Rear Window are easily discussable in tandem with one another. In Rear Window, Jeffries at once both identifies with Lisa (particularly when she becomes trapped in Thorwald's apartment; it's the identification of a passive and helpless cinema spectator with a damsel in distress), yet also needs to masculinise her in order to suppress what he cannot identify with: the inherent differences that exist between males and females. These differences frighten Jeffries because they simultaneously augment his awareness of sameness—his awareness of his own femininity—and thus threaten his sense of masculinity. (Importantly, however, he ultimately fails in his masculinisation of Lisa—or, at least, he does if the last shot of the film is anything to go by.) In Vertigo, Scottie's identification with Madeleine (with her wandering aimlessness and her longing for the past to cite but two examples) coexists with his desire to overcome that identification by exerting the same type of "power and freedom" over Judy as Elster did over his wife and Carlotta's husband over her; a desire that is constantly thwarted by people in greater positions of power than he is: Madeleine/Judy (as we shall see) and, more omnipotently (and by way of his mise en scène), Hitchcock himself. In her discussion of Vertigo, Tania Modleski observes how Scottie continuously finds himself "thrown back into an into an identification, a mirroring relationship, with [Madeleine] and her desires . . . unable to master the woman" (3) as early as the first scene in the flower shop, when from a POV shot of Madeleine (Scottie's), Hitchcock cuts to the obligatory reverse angle, subsequently revealing a striking composition in which we not only see Scottie spying through a doorway (ever the active/passive spectator), but the reflected image of Madeleine as well, in a mirror on the back of the door: "by implication," writes Donald Spoto, "he (and we) may be seen as her reflection." (4) Needless to say, the dichotomy of (a) sameness and difference between the sexes and (b) familiarity of identification and the simultaneous fear of and desire to escape it is inextricably tied to the duality of the nature of spectatorship in Hitchcock (both involve what I shall for the time being call matters of seeing) and undoubtedly dictates to a significant extent the nature of Hitchcock's formal choices (such as camera placement in the flower shop).

The final instance of Vertigo 's fascination with and reliance upon dualities that I wish to discuss is less directly related to the previous two and is the dual nature of death, which positively haunts the film on both an implicitly suggestive thematic level and on a formal and structural one. (5) From the outset, death is presented to us in a mixed light in Vertigo, particularly in regards to the image of Carlotta, who may, of course, be dead, but who has gained "unlimited power in death" (6) and who "wields this new power in acts of psychic possession" (7)—the same type of possession that, arguably, is what plagues Scottie after each of the major deaths in the film (the police officer, Madeleine and Judy). Thus, death is at once both a beginning and an end in Vertigo: the end of mortal life and the beginning of omnipotent power. Indeed, it is this that I believe renders Judy a more powerful character than Scottie in the picture (even during his misogynistic and futile attempts to control her), though this stance does perhaps require a very specific reading of the film's narrative and thematic climax in order to function: that which takes Judy's death as suicide.

Indeed, the entire misguided notion of constructing a spectre—of making flesh that which is ephemeral—of restaging the past—is a contradictory, dichotomous one, pivoting on a paradox, and the flipside to Scottie's construction of Madeleine is that it's ultimately, ironically, de structive. The problem is that Judy is not a spectre and not a ghost, but a living, breathing, autonomous human being that, unlike the idea of Madeleine, is not within Scottie's power to control. Nor is it, as the existence of Judy's autonomous flashback insists, dependent on his gaze to exist. Problematically for Scottie, who, for reasons outlined earlier, desires complete control of the female Other, Judy's transformation means that "the woman he loves is not an apparition in his arms" (8)—indeed, is not something that he can so easily control. Ultimately, Judy's final, torturous predicament is that she must somehow, at once and impossibly, be both apparition—spectre, ghost and memory of the past—and woman in Scottie's arms—flesh, alive and in the present. It is precisely this predicament that leads to the film's final statement—its ultimate statement, perhaps—on the duality of death (and on Scottie's powerlessness). In Marian E. Keane's reading of the final sequence, (9) what Judy sees in the undefined, shadowy form of the nun is a prophetic image of herself under Scottie's obsessive gaze: in order for him to be truly satisfied with her—in order for his masculinity to remain unthreatened—she must become a shadow; a spectre of the past. Instead, however, she chooses her freedom, making a choice that will constitute the final shift of power in the film and quite likely emasculate Scottie indefinitely: Judy chooses suicide. (Indeed, she can be seen facing outwards as if leaping—and not inwards as if accidentally falling backwards—in the shot immediately following that of the nun's shadow.) This reading of the film's ending, proposed by Keane, works on the principle that the true vestige of freedom is the ability to choose to relinquish one's own life. Judy, like Carlotta over Madeleine and Madeleine over Scottie, exerts her power through death; her memory no doubt possessing Scottie; rendering him, finally, completely immobile from beyond the grave.

Clearly, Hitchcock's Vertigo is a picture full of—indeed, a picture fuelled by—instances of dichotomy. The three discussed here are the three that I personally feel are the most important to the picture, both formally and thematically, though they are by no means the only ones. True, it can be said that every picture operates at some level on such dualities—sexual love as a flipside to emotional hatred of the Other—happiness as a means of masking deep-seated fear—but I would argue that Vertigo, more than any other picture, is a picture that knowingly and consciously approaches these dualities with a mind to better understand them.

Notes

1. To discuss the metaphor further: just as we see the world 'through' the cinema screen, Scottie primarily sees it through the windshield of his car—indeed, we share Scottie's POV more in the film's driving sequences than we do in any other. In this respect, Vertigo arguably shares something with Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (1997), in which the windshield of Mr. Badii (Homayon Ershadi) clearly becomes a cinematic 'window' and himself an active/passive spectator.

2. Jeff is at the mercy of the world outside his window (which Lisa [Grace Kelly] eventually becomes an active part of, but which Jeff, as spectator, cannot) in Rear Window; Scottie is at the mercy of Elster (Tom Helmore), and eventually Judy, in Vertigo; and the audience is at the mercy of Hitchcock—the director himself—in every single one of his pictures.

3. Modleski, T. (1988) The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. Methuen, New York. (pg. 92)

4. Spoto, D. (1976) The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. Doubleday, New York. (pg. 309)

5. What I mean by this is that the film must, as a result of its own structural, internal logic, build to a climax that explodes this theme. The narrative importance of the image of Carlotta and what she represents—an oppressed woman who gains power in death—dictates that Judy too must transcend life in order to gain power and freedom as a woman.

6. Modleski, T. (pg. 93) Rebecca and Mrs. Bates (from Rebecca [1940] and Psycho [1960] respectively) share this 'power in death' with Carlotta, Madeleine and, later—or so we may assume—Judy.

7. Ibid.

8. Keane, M. E. (1986) 'A Closer Look at Scopophilia: Mulvey, Hitchcock, and Vertigo' in Deutelbaum, M. & Poague, L. (1986) A Hitchcock Reader. Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa. (pg. 244)

9. Ibid.