My Secret Shames: Vertigo

So, yes, up until a couple weeks ago, I had never seen Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock's most acclaimed piece of work.  I don't have a good excuse, I just never got around to it.  Truth be told, I never had a nagging desire to see it.

That all changed a few weeks back when Sight and Sound magazine released their latest poll, which ranked Vertigo number one.  For those that don't know, Sight and Sound conducts a poll of film critics every ten years to rank the greatest movies of all time.  In the last five polls -- that is since 1952 -- the top spot had been taken by Citizen Kane.  However, this year, Kane was overtaken by Hitchcock.

Needless to say, this had me intrigued.  I immediately decided to make this movie the subject of my inaugural "My Secret Shames" post on this blog.  I know what you're thinking...that's an incredible honor.



Upon my first viewing of this film, I do have to say that, while I was not really underwhelmed by the movie, it's surprising that so many consider it the greatest film ever made.  Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's acclaimed, but I don't think I'd put it ahead of Citizen Kane.  There are a few other movies I'd rank ahead of it, but, like I've said, my overall knowledge of film history is not what I wish it was.  That's kind of the point of these posts.

Still, Vertigo is a great film.  While Hitchcock is always praised for story-telling and visual flair, this movie is more layered and subtle than most of his other classics.  It explores themes like sexual obsession, identity, the potentially fraudulent nature of romantic love, and Hitchcock's own propensity to treat his female characters like crap.

For those who want to review everything that happens in the movie, here is a very detailed summary of the plot.  My own discussion of the plot will be exceptionally brief, given the level of detail in the movie.

The story focuses on the relationship between Scottie Ferguson, played by Jimmy Stewart, and a woman, played by Kim Novak, who is supposedly Madeline Elster, the wife of Scottie's friend from college.  After retiring from the police force because of his severe acrophobia, Scottie agrees to follow Madeline around because her husband -- an old college buddy -- believes she's been possessed by a spirit and may be suicidal.  Soon, Scottie becomes obsessed with Madeline, and, after he saves her life following an apparent suicide attempt, the feelings appear to become mutual.  He can't help himself, even though it is clear that she's suffering from severe delusions.

After several outings, they visit an old Spanish mission that Madeline -- or more specifically the spirit possessing Madeline -- claims to have visited in her past life.  After making some vaguely suicidal statements, she runs away and up the stairs of a bell tower.  Scottie tries to follow her, but remember, he has acrophobia, which makes climbing a high tower extremely difficult.  He's unable to catch her and she leaps off the tower to her death, or so it seems.

Though the authorities acquit him of any responsibility, Scottie feels extremely guilty for Madeline's death.  His obsession grows and he begins to see her everywhere he goes.  One day, he sees a woman on the street who, other than her brown hair (Madeline, like every Hitchcockian female lead, was a blond), is a dead ringer for Madeline.  He follows her to her apartment and eventually meets her, telling her that she reminds him of someone he knew and that he'd like to spend more time with her.

Up until this point, the movie is told entirely from Scottie's point of view.  But, at this one moment, and only this moment, the point of view shifts to Judy, the Madeline lookalike.  We learn that she actually was Madeline, or at least she was playing Madeline for Scottie's benefit as part of a plot for Elster to murder his wife.  It was the real Madeline who was thrown off the bell tower that day, so the actual object of Scottie's obsession is still alive.  We also learn that she really was in love with him and that she feels extremely guilty for deceiving him.

It's this revelation that makes the entire movie.  It changes the very nature of the film, making you reexamine the first half of the movie to determine what moments were real and which were part of the facade.  For example, after she throws herself into the San Francisco Bay and Scottie saves her, he takes her back unconscious to his apartment, undressing her so that he can dry her clothes.  "Madeline" doesn't react negatively to this, which is what you'd expect.  But, that sort of makes sense given that she was delusional and suicidal.  But, after this revelation, it's clear that she was not these things and was, in fact, probably not unconscious at all.  The following scene where they talk beside his fire, the scene where they begin to fall in love with one another -- which is wrought with almost creepy sexual tension -- takes on a whole new meaning as a result.

Scottie and Judy go on to have a relationship.  He becomes obsessed with making her over to look like Madeline, buying her Madeline's exact clothes, making her cut and dye her hair.  This pattern, wherein in Scottie's obsession enslaves them both, continues until she finally looks just as she did on the day of Madeline's "death."  Scottie, finally with the woman he loves -- even if, in the back of his mind, he knows it's not actually her -- is at peace at last.

That is until Judy puts on a necklace that Scottie recognizes as belonging to the woman whose spirit was supposedly possessing Madeline.  At this point, the jig is up, and Scottie understands what has gone on.  He doesn't come out and say it, though, instead, he makes them return to the mission and the bell tower.  He forces Judy up the stairs and, at the top of the tower, he explains that he's figured it all out.  Judy, apologetic and scared of her mind, tries to explain herself.  But, from a shadowy corner of the tower, a nun appears, startling Madeline so severely that she falls out of the window.

Scottie looks over the edge of the tower, down at Madeline's body.  He's cured of his acrophobia, but he has effectively killed the object of his desire.

Fade out.

Once again, virtually all of the female leads in Alfred Hitchcock's movies were blond and dressed in styles that bordered on fetishistic.  They were also always either absurdly stupid or cunning and traitorous.  He had a tendency to put his female characters -- even those that lived -- through a series of brutal and disturbing sequences.  Actresses on his movies felt like they were controlled and brutalized as well.  Here's a pretty good takedown of Hitchcock's apparent sexism.

Vertigo is no exception to this trend, but it is markedly different in at least one regard. In this movie, it was the movie's protagonist who inflicts most of the real damage.  While Scottie is, in the first half the movie, the victim of Madeline/Judy's deception, that gets turned on its head.  It's Scottie's obsession with Madeline's outward appearance that forces him to remake Judy in her image, no matter the pain it's obviously causing her.  It's almost as if Hitchcock had finally become aware of his woman troubles and wanted to critique them on screen. But once again, the woman in the story is not without fault.  She does lie, she is duplicitous and she's pretty complicit in the makeover as well.  But, in the end, her death is not the just dessert for her trickery, it's the ultimate result of Scottie's inability to control his desire.

That's pretty remarkable.  However, while I understood the surface level of these elements of the movie the first time through, I did have to read a fair amount of commentary to understand it more thoroughly.  Indeed, this is a movie that requires a lot of thought and reexamination to understand its subtext and thematic elements.  That's not a bad thing -- not by a mile -- but, the surface-level story -- the psychological thriller -- does have a tendency to drag under the weight of its themes, particularly when compared to other Hitchcock classics.

The movie wasn't a big hit or an instant classic when it came out.  In fact, Hitchcock was apparently never proud of it, believing that Stewart was too old for the part.  It's true, it's an aging Jimmy Stewart we see on the screen, but it's also easily one of his best performances, a textbook slow-burn depiction of an unwinding man.  Far more nuance and subtlety than the typical Stewart role.

In short, while I've enjoyed reviewing and thinking about the movie, it's not nearly as fun to watch as one would hope a film in this genre would be.  Of course, I'm saying that after seeing it one time.

There are technical aspects I could go over as well.  But, this is getting pretty long.  There is a lot of great commentary out there on this movie for those that are interested.  The summary I linked to above is fantastic.  Eric Snider wrote a pretty good column on it a while back.  And, Roger Ebert devoted one of his early "Great Movies" essays to it, which is fantastic.  Those are just a few examples.