At the end, the mystery in this film disappears with the sobering intrusion of words at the moment of the last kiss, as if it foreshadowed that everything still might be as before: I hear voices, says the nun in the final sequence on the bell tower, appearing out of the darkness like the harbinger of death, and frightened Judy/Madeleine, backing a few steps, falls into the abyss of reality. These last – but not final – spoken words in the film definitely cut already quite thin thread of mystery, lift the veil of the fiction and illusion behind which emerges the transparent, prosaic, sinister and ugly face of reality.
“This is my second chance” or Recurrence
The manifestations of recurrence, desire, wish, compulsion or instinct for repetition are more that conspicuous in Vertigo. This motive, mentioned and discussed in several analytical texts, does represent the fundamental element in the formal and narrative construction of the film, main support of its semantic and symbolic exposition, primary component of the psychological constitution and function of the characters. The concept of recurrence is incorporated already into the main visual symbol of the film (spiral-spiraling/cyclic movement); the animations in the title sequence and in Scottie’s dream, Madeleine’s coiffure, rings on the cut sequoia, the bell tower staircase, the bouquet, the chair on which Scottie demonstrates his deliverance of vertigo “theory”, the chandelier in McKittrick Hotel which markedly captures Scottie’s gaze, Elster’s swivel chair, the large round decorative plate on the wall of Scottie’s apartment…), all enhanced by the Bernard Hermann’s spiraling musical themes.
Mozart’s music at the beginning of the film (while Scottie and Madge talk in her apartment) is repeated in the hospital sequence; Madeleine and Scottie, together or separately, several times visit the same places; Madge paraphrases the portrait of Carlotta Valdez replacing her face with her own; in the repeated symbolic appearance at the (hotel) window we first see Madeleine and then also Judy; the image reflected in the mirror appears several times: at the flower shop, at the fashion shop, at the Hotel Empire; Madeleine appears and disappears twice; Scottie repeats Madeleine by forcing Judy to change her hair color, coiffure, clothes, shoes; death of Madeleine is the result of her obsessive wish to repeat her great grandmother’s death, etc., etc…; finally, the very idea of the copy presumes the repetition as its fundamental constituent. Finally, the desire for repetition is itself repeated in the specific form, outside the film, in the desire to repeat its viewing.
It is a common phrase to say that Vertigo is a film that must be seen several times. Why? Superficially, there is nothing unusual about it; everyone would say that it is a thing to do with every above average film. But why is not the same demand repeated, at least not so conspicuously, for many other brilliant films? As if Vertigo possesses even something above extraordinary, something beyond masterpiece, actually something quite different – which has nothing in common with the rigid hierarchy on the axiological level. This film, therefore, requires several viewings not (only) because of its quality, but for something unique in itself, in its structure, its intrinsic pattern.
On the one hand, the film cannot be adequately perceived in one viewing due to its multi layered model of construction where all the levels (visual/pictorial, narrative/verbal, symbolic/semantic, auditory, etc…) are equal and equivalent, i.e. its constitutive elements are not organized by the hierarchic principle of subordination, there is no dominant and subordinate, no central and peripheral, primary, secondary and marginal. That is why in one viewing the simultaneous perception/s simply cannot “grasp” and absorb all levels of this unique and polysemic emission. Moreover, the additional difficulty is created by another, perhaps really unique quality of this film: the inevitability of more than intense, i.e. not just ordinary, emotional participation and investment of the viewer, impossibility of watching it “cold headedly”, exclusively rationally and intellectually. On a rational level I know that I am watching a fake, fiction, something false/untrue, unreal, but at the same time I feel (different level) as if everything was real/true because I am involved and want to know what will happen next, I care about it, I am concerned. The emotional and exalted state amortizes the efficiency of rational and intellectual perception, as if during the watching of the film it falls into some kind of anaesthetized stupor and awakes only later, when the fiction in front of our eyes had ended.
Perhaps all these are commonplace, perhaps this is the matter of solipsist, subjective projections and mystifications, but it is not the end: all this is repeated with every new viewing. The plot is known, there is no secret, no uncertainty and apprehension, and one knows what will happen, but still is involved, or, to be colloquial and more precise, one is “hooked”. When I watch this film I wonder about the numerous details of the story, why it had to happen the way it did, could it not have been different, and so on…
When he was making his films Hitchcock certainly had no intention to make masterpieces. But they did get made, it seems he “lapsed” several times, perhaps especially with Vertigo, although he almost obsessively tried to keep everything under control. There were some problems with this film, he (fortunately!) could not get Vera Miles, who he wanted first, for the role of Madeleine/Judy, and he was not very satisfied with some things Kim Novak did. At the end it appears that he did not think he made something special. Neither did the critics. First reviews, more than reserved, mostly concluded merely with the cataloguing of another typically Hitchcockian thriller, only this time with rather slow rhythm and too long exposition. It was only later that people recognized the fact that Vertigo was another work of genius by the esteemed director.
Bibliography
1) Auiler, Dan Vertigo: The Making Of a Hitchcock Classic (1986; Griffin Trade Paperback)
2) Auiler, Dan Hitchcock s Notebooks: An Authorized and Illustrated Look Into The Creative Mind Of Alfred Hitchcock (1983, Avon Books)
3) Spoto, Donald The Dark Side Of Genius: The Life Of Alfred Hitchcock (1980, Da Capo Press)
4) Hitchcock, Alfred Vertigo (1958, DVD edition)
316