Viewing Journal 7: Vertigo

For this journal, you will consider the narrative, mise-en-scene, editing, cinematography, and themes of Vertigo.  In two to three typed pages, you should address one of the following questions, developing your response with specific details from the film.  I will collect this journal, along with the journals for Rear Window and North by Northwest, on Wednesday, February 23.

1) Vertigo breaks dominant narrative conventions by having Madeleine die in the middle of the film and by revealing the murder and its solution well before the film's ending.  What is the effect of Hitchcock's narrative choices?  How does the hierarchy of knowledge shift after Judy's flashback?  How does our knowledge of Judy's identity color our interpretation of Scottie's attempt to remake her as Madeleine?

2) Examine the framing, lighting, cinematography and dialogue of the scenes in which Scottie trails Madeleine, up to and including the scene in his apartment.  How do the formal elements of these scenes construct Scottie's character, Madeleine's character, and the nature of his desire for her?

3) Vertigo examines the desire for and fear of death.  Acrophobia, the disorder that causes Scottie's vertigo, is characterized both by a fear of heights and a desire to jump.  The suicidal Madeleine remarks that she "hates knowing she has to die."  Isolate one scene that explores conflicting visions of death, discussing how formal elements reinforce this tension.

4) In Vertigo, characters have several identities: Madeleine is Judy; Scottie is called "Scottie," "John," and "Johnny-O."  Why do the central characters have multiple names and identities?  In your answer, discuss how questions of identity function on both a formal and narrative level.

5) Examine the editing and mise-en-scene of Scottie's dream.  How does his dream mimic Madeleine's death and her dream of death on a formal level?  Why does the film draw a parallel between Scottie's dream and Madeleine's death?

6) Past and present alternate throughout Vertigo, both in terms of setting and characters.  In the first act, Scottie interacts with Midge, a woman who works in her modern apartment, Elster, who prefers the past to the present, and Madeleine, who wanders San Francisco's historical sites, seemingly possessed by Carlotta Valdes.  How does the contrast between past and present function in the film?

7) Although Scottie quits a "masculine" profession and exhibits aggressive behavior toward Judy, the film also presents him as somehow feminized.  Scottie wears a corset, becomes frozen with fear at a crucial moment in the plot, and suffers from acute melancholia after Madeleine's death.  Why does the film offer such a portrayal of Scottie?  In your answer, you may address the film's plot as well as the social and cultural context of the 1950s.