Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Re-posted as part of the For the Love of Film: Film Preservation Blogathon. 

Merry Go Round Broke Down

(Warning: plot and story discussed in close detail)

Was looking at Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) again, drinking in all the little details. Like: Gavin Elster offering Scottie a drink, who turns it down, later pouring himself a drink at Midge's minibar. Scottie doesn't trust Elster enough to accept alcohol from him; Midge he trusts as an old friend--that is, completely, though this does him little good in the long run (Midge is about as effective as Scottie's instincts at keeping him out of trouble).

It's delicious fun this re-viewing, uncovering along the way a little clue that should have alerted Scottie to Elster's shenanigans much earlier. When they meet, Elster calls him Scottie; Midge always calls him Johnny, or Johnny-O. When he and Madeline introduce themselves, he offers her several choices: John, or Johnny for close friends, Scottie for acquaintances (again, a reminder of where Elster stands in Scottie's regard). Madeleine settles on John, even calling him by that name once. Then an odd thing happens: through their many scenes together (I checked the 9/12/57 draft of the script, yet another interesting read for what Hitchcock cuts out as being too expository (a long voiceover by Elster over Scottie's pursuit of Madeleine through the city, for example)), not once does Madeleine call Scottie by name until they reach the seaside (ah, the narcissism of beauty--particularly an endangered beauty who both parties (presumably) consider endangered), where she runs and he catches her and they embrace for the first time--at which point she calls him Scottie.

So when did he become Scottie to Madeleine instead of John? Isn't that going in the reverse direction, against his wishes, from good friend to mere acquaintance? But you must remember, Elster called him Scottie; in a moment of (probably acted, possibly genuine) distress she may have forgotten to stay in character and called him by the name under which Elster--and by extension her as Judy Barton, Elster's mistress--knows him.

What d'you think? Does the theory float? Must admit, though, the necklace is a simpler, far more visually compelling giveaway.

But one can leave or take the little details; when all is said and done, I believe Vertigo isn't about love, or obsession, or sex or death (or it isn't just about those things), it's about storytelling, the pull and power of a good narrative. Consider: Elster weaves a plotline about his wife, throws in bits of San Francisco local lore to make it this side of convincing (remember he's been in the city a year--a year in which to prepare and research for his little drama (but then, doesn't the story need Scottie's accident? Some months then, possibly the period of time during which Scottie wears his corset--maybe a little more if Elster has been at it for a while, and Elster manages to fit Scottie's accident into his master plan)).

So--Elster tells Scottie a story, and he's brilliant at it, even to backing away and admitting it's all a bit fantastic ("I'm not making it up; I wouldn't know how"--can't believe Elster kept a straight face saying that). This and Novak's beauty and the spell Hitchcock weaves around him using the enchanted air of San Francisco seals Scottie's fate.

(On Novak--let's just forget all this talk about her being a bad actress, shall we? She may not have been the most talented performer in Hollywood at the time, but she was the perfect 'apt pupil' for Elster to dangle before Scottie. If as Bresson might put it a human being on film is just a 'model' to be used like any other prop in realizing the filmmaker's ambitions, then Novak was a superb prop, from her lacquered elegance as Madeleine to her animal vitality as the more common Judy. More, she was a powerful sexual presence, especially when she broke through the lacquer--first time when stepping out of Scottie's bedroom (she'd just been fished out of the San Francisco Bay), her body in a half crouch framed by the doorway, her face tilted upward as if in offering, Scottie's red nightgown pulled tight around her like gift wrapping; second time in Judy's own hotel room, her body posed in the same crouched, upturned-face position, haloed in an unhealthy green light. At such moments she was less actress than object, a mannequin of illimitable desire; in the bell tower however she was actress--or to be more precise, she was Judy, the girl from Kansas, wearing a perfected Madeleine mask, frightened to death of her crazed lover, her judge, her possible executioner.)

(Speaking of mannequins, love the sideview shot Hitchcock inserts of Judy's feet being dragged up the bell tower steps. If the subtext of Novak's performance is that she's a department store dummy dressed up by different men for their differing designs, then this shot turns the whole into an explicitly grotesque joke, one with not a hint of pathos--the corpse already being mistreated before it has had the chance to expire).

Elster tells his story, and it works better than he dreamed; Scottie finds himself trapped in Elster's narrative, going mad because Elster, limited artist that he is, didn't bother providing the story with a resolution (his interest applies only up to the point where his wife is killed). Elster never cares what happens to Scottie; in terms of storyteller he doesn't have the empathy of Jean Renoir or Jonathan Demme or Robert Altman. Elster in effect is more like Hitchcock himself, who sets his characters in motion driven by some silly MacGuffin then puts them through hell-- or what, when you step back and take a closer look, seems suspiciously like the plot outline of a thriller flick.

And Scottie can't take it. Like a man listening to a ditty in an endless loop ("Merry Go Round Broke Down?"), or a poem that repeats itself over and over, or a story without any real end, Scottie's driven mad by the lack of a resolution.* He wants closure, dammit, and he's going to get it even if someone suffers along the way. 

* (Here for your listening pleasure is the theme song Hitchcock heard and considered but ultimately rejected--possibly because it might drive the audience crazy (I think I agree))

And they do; Scottie in effect sits on the same canvas chair Elster abandoned (the one with the name "Alfred Hitchcock" printed in the back) and continues the drama from where Elster left off.

And then there's poor Judy, remade first by Elster then, with much resistance, by Scottie (one senses that her reluctance isn't completely due to the insult--the man she loves looking at her and seeing someone else--as it is the sheer dreariness of playing the role for the umpteenth time). Judy's life is a metaphor for the Hitchcock blonde writhing under the director's hand, giving her finest performance despite herself on the set of the ultimate movie.

While we're at it, where does love come in? Not often, I think; Scottie displays signs of obsession, of being utterly caught up in the circumstances of the film's first half, then of being caught up in the possibility of re-creating those circumstances in the film's second. Does he care for Madeleine? Does it matter to Scottie that Madeleine is actually Elster's wife recreated in the figure of his mistress? That later she's recreated by Scottie himself, in Judy's hand-me-down flesh? 

I think not, at least for the most part; I think the moment when there was genuine selflessness, or at least genuine regard for a living, breathing other occurs near the end, high up in the bell tower. Scottie had just wrung a confession out of Judy; all veils have dropped, all illusions shattered. The possibility arises that Scottie might accept Judy for what she is: a scared young woman foolishly in love, hoping to make a man love her "as I am, for myself." For at least that moment in time it isn't Elster's or Scottie's designs that rule the two standing in that bell tower but life, pure and simple.

Vertigo stands as testament to how far we will go, what lengths we will pursue, how close to the border of madness we will hew to indulge our thirst for whatever makes us feel alive. It's testament in particular to our need to know What Happens Next--even in a narrative Hitchcock O so carefully and perversely ends moments (seconds?) before its proper resolution (three guesses what I think that resolution is, or should be). Like many a great story it leaves us in the same spot it left Scottie--standing outside the bell tower with a precipitous plunge before him, uncaring, unconfused, free from his acrophobia at long last. 

March 16, 2008