Sample Response to Viewing Journal 7: Vertigo

Question

The writer is responding to the following question from the journal assignment: 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. 
 

Response

Vertigo opens with the beginnings of Scottie's vertigo as he hangs suspended from a broken drain of a tall building.  We are never shown how he escapes and any explanation seems improbable.  This lack of closure to the root of Scottie's Acrophobia leaves us with a feeling of hopelessness and suspension; as if we too are falling into the abyss.  When Madeline is introduced by Elster, she is described as embodying the soul of a woman long dead.  When we first see her on screen, she is wearing an elegant dark evening gown and seemingly floats by the camera and Scottie.  She is like a dream and naturally begins to fascinate Scottie.  The dream which she represents and envelopes is that of death. Madeline is playing the role of Carlotta Valdes, a woman who chose and desired death over life. As Scottie follows Madeline throughout the historic sites of San Francisco, he is struggling with his own conflicting desires to embrace death and allow himself to fall into that great unknown and the fear with accompanies it.  

Scottie's romance with his dream of death as it is embodied in Madeline is best shown in the scene in the sequoia grove.  Sequoias are said to be the oldest living things, a testament to life but at the same time a reminder of the insignificance of our own life spans.  It is in this scene that Madeline verbalizes her thought of all the people who were born and died while the trees went on living.  She goes on to say, "I don't like it...Knowing I have to die."  The sequoias reinforce these comments as a close up of a cross section of a tree moves out from the core, each ring labeled with historical events happening at that moment in time.  Madeline finds where she was born and where she died, drawing attention once again to the insignificance of life and death.  

Madeline suddenly turns and begins to run as she disappears in the darkness of the forest.  Scottie struggles to find her as the camera tracks the trees with streams of sunlight dotting the scene from the forest ceiling above.  It creates a dream-like, romantic vision of the Madeline and Scottie's relationship and their perceptions of death.  When Scottie finds Madeline she is in a sort of trance and begs him not to make her recognize her lapse into the past.  Scottie takes on the romantic role of protector and embraces her.  The scene concludes with an embrace; the sea acting as a background to their new love.  As the waves crash against the rocks it creates a sense of eternity, their love something which has existed throughout the centuries just as the ocean and the sequoias. 

In a sense Scottie is embracing death in the only way he can.  He falls in love with a woman who in his eyes is close to and has, like him, seen death.  By becoming the protector, Scottie enables himself to masculinely deal with his fear of death by loving and protecting another with the same fears.  He is terrified of falling into the abyss of the unknown, but this possibility is made into a desirable almost romantic dream by Madeline.  Their relationship in this scene mirrors the symptoms of Acrophobia because of the fact that Madeline symbolizes death itself and the human fascination with it.  Hers is an intriguing character, we like Scottie are intrigued by her.  By falling in love with Madeline and embracing her at the conclusion of the scene, he is symbolically embracing death itself.  But the other member of the relationship, Madeline, symbolizes the fear of death and the need to be protected by it.  Like Acrophobia the couple desires death while at the same time fears the possibilities of the unknown.