Vertigo Booklet a2 Film

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VERTIGO BOOKLET
A2 FILM
SINGLE FILM STUDY
Camera Movement in Vertigo
by Richard Allen
[Editor's note. Richard Allen, Chair of Cinema Studies at New York University, coedits the 'Hitchcock Annual'. His 'Hitchcock and Romantic Irony: Storytelling,
Sexuality and Style' will be published by Columbia University Press in Fall, 2007.
Below, he deftly relates the Ernie's Restaurant scene in Vertigo to the key cameramovements of the film.]

Vertigo seems to me of all Hitchcock’s films the one nearest to perfection. Indeed, its
profundity is inseparable from the perfection of form: it is a perfect organism.
- Robin Wood

HITCHCOCK'S VERTIGO, LIKE REBECCA, is a film about the allure the dead may
exert on the living, but in Vertigo the deathly object of desire is fully incarnated in
the figure of Madeleine possessed by Carlotta Valdes - whose picture hangs in the
San Francisco art museum. That the ghostlike Madeleine brings to life the youthful
image of Carlotta gives the character a sense of timelessness, of mask-like
immortality. As legions of critics have pointed out, Madeleine is a fetish object for
Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) as indicated by the way in which, when he loses
her, he reconstructs her image in the body of one Judy Barton (Kim Novak) from
Salina, Kansas, who, of course, turns out to have been Madeleine after all. However,
Vertigo is reduced if it is simply conceived as a film about male perversion; it is also,
equally, a film about love. Hitchcock fully implicates the spectator in the allure of
Judy, not simply through character-identification and point-of-view but through the
orchestration of camera movement, color, graphic, mise-en-scène, and performance
in a manner that makes the film itself a correlate for the spectator of Scottie’s
aestheticized object of desire. The result is a film of aching beauty, a supreme
achievement in the history of cinema.
In this essay I want to focus upon one aspect of this achievement - Hitchcock’s
camera movement in Vertigo - and in particular three set-pieces of camera
movement that are interrelated in their structure and meaning: the scene at Ernie’s
Restaurant that initiates Scottie’s pursuit of Madeleine; the famous zoom in/track
out point-of-view shot that evokes Scottie’s acrophobia; and the equally celebrated
360-degree pan that encircles Scottie’s embrace of Judy Barton re-transformed into
Madeleine.
The scene at Ernie’s Restaurant begins with a camera movement towards a doorway
of radiant red glass, which has the force at once of a barrier and a lure. The next shot
consists of a languid, fluid camera movement that tracks back from Scottie at the bar
through a partition that at once separates and connects the bar and the dining area,
as he glances screen-left to the back of the restaurant. The camera pauses

momentarily to take in the dining room with its glorious, deep-saturated red
“tapestry” walls and formal white floral arrangements. It is positioned exactly
opposite a picture framed by white flowers on the far wall in a manner that evokes,
like a mirror, the pictorial framing of the shot itself. The camera then begins to move
forward from this “establishing shot” towards the object that Scottie’s gaze seeks out,
Judy Barton as Madeleine Elster, shining in an emerald green gown.
The significance of this shot can only be understood by examining what comes after
it. As many critics have pointed out, much of the film is structured as an alternation
between a forward-tracking shot and a backward-tracking reaction-shot, employed
both when Scottie follows Madeleine on foot and when his car follows hers through
the streets of San Francisco.1 The forward-tracking movement in Ernie's restaurant
suggests the forward-tracking shot that is used throughout the film to imply
Madeleine's allure for Scottie. The backward-tracking movement in the Ernie's scene
evokes the backward-tracking shot used throughout the film to register the manner
in which Scottie is bonded to his object of desire. Intercut together, they evoke the
sense of the character at once pursuing and being drawn towards his object.
In The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Hitchcock made a joke out of this camera
movement: the protagonist, Ben Mckenna, is shown walking up a passageway to the
wrong place, having mistaken Ambrose Chapell, a person, for Ambrose Chapel, a
building. The forward-tracking shot and the backward-moving reaction-shot evoke
the sense of the character being “led up the garden path.” In Vertigo, Scottie is also
led up the garden path, but this time the path is in a graveyard and the consequences
are not a joke, but something that is “deadly” serious.
The camera movement in Ernie’s Restaurant evokes the combination forward track
and backward track that defines the point-of-view structure of the film, but here the
camera movement does not straightforwardly articulate a point of view. Instead,
Hitchcock self-consciously sets up the relationship between the elements of the
point-of-view structure that the rest of the film will enact. He traces objectively the
structure that the rest of the film will trace subjectively. Scottie does not actually see
Madeleine directly, instead it is the camera itself that traces the connection between
Scottie and the object of allure. Since Scottie does not literally see Madeleine, the
camera does not occupy his point of view. Instead the camera stages the relationship
between the looker and the object of his look, creating a subjective shot structure but
with the subjectivity removed. Hitchcock here, as it were, announces the
identification that will be made by his camera with the subjective allure that
Madeleine holds for Scottie. In the microcosm of Ernie’s restaurant, the shimmering
allure of Madeleine is equated with the allure of the world of the film itself as an
idealized, aestheticized, hyperbolic reality, more real that reality itself, that is, a
surreal universe.
The other side of the beautiful illusion of timeless beauty is the fact of human
mortality and sense of life’s meaninglessness that the illusion of timeless beauty
papers over. This abyss of meaning is opened up in Vertigo by the famous vertigoshot itself whereby Hitchcock embodies for the spectator the visceral experience of
Scottie’s acrophobia in the combination zoom in/track out point-of-view shot. This
representation through camera movement and zoom of the experience of falling
creates an effect that is precisely the opposite of the camera movement that brings
into being Scottie’s relationship to Madeleine and the world of the film that mimes

that relationship. The effect of the vertigo-shot is to close down the gap between self
and world which must be maintained to sustain the beautiful illusion of Madeleine,
and the shot also, equally, has the effect of disrupting the spectator’s absorption in
the world of the film. Hitchcock’s reverse-field cutting between the forward-tracking
shot and backward-tracking reaction-shot sustains the distance between self and
other, even as it articulates the allure of immersing the self in the other. In the
vertigo-shot, the relationship between self and other implodes. Scottie is at once
pulled into and seems to fall into the spatial field in a way that collapses the distance
between subject and object that elsewhere is sustained by the cutting between
forward and backward motions of the camera. Scottie confronts an implosion of
space in a colorless spiraling void in a manner akin to madness. The experience of
vertigo on the bell-tower of the Mission San Juan Bautista leads both to the
destruction of Scottie’s beautiful illusion and of the subjectivity (his own) that it
serves to sustain. Madeleine perishes moments after Scottie’s attack of vertigo, and
Scottie himself is reduced to a catatonic state. Equally, in the vertigo shot, the
beautiful illusion of the film itself is destroyed, the contemplative experience of
beauty ravishingly created in Ernie’s restaurant is transformed into the sensation of
shock and overt manipulation.
The 360 degree camera movement that occurs after Scottie has succeeded in
reconstructing Judy as Madeleine recreates this beautiful illusion as a microcosm that
transcends the drab colorless environment of the everyday represented by Judy’s
aging hotel room. But here, the illusion that is created is no longer one of which
Scottie is primarily an observer. Rather it is world of illusory perfection that
somehow contains the observer within it. Brilliantly, Hitchcock contrives the
movement of the camera as a spiral with Judy and Scottie together within its eye, as
if the gap between self and other has been transcended, in contrast to the implosion
of self and other created by the vertigo shot itself. We should note that in the
shot/reverse-shot that precedes this camera movement, Scottie looks at Madeleine
bathed in ghostly jade light and we see that jade light reflected back in the look of his
eyes, as if the eye of the beholder has become or merged with the object of his gaze.
As Scottie kisses Judy as Madeleine in close-up, the camera starts to track around
them to the right but pans left as if being drawn into them - then continues to track
right and is again drawn in. Suddenly, the background of the shot begins to
transform into the environment of the Mission San Juan Batista stable, the historical
place of Scottie’s last encounter with “Madeleine” and the place associated with
Carlotta Valdes. As Scottie senses the background changing - that's to say, as his
historical memory is triggered - the camera slows its movement and begins to pull
back to medium shot. Simultaneously, the background itself begins to move from left
to right, creating a sense that the spiral is being opened out by centrifugal forces.
Then, as the hint of a memory recedes, the camera again begins tracking and
panning to conclude the shot in the tightest close up of the sequence, set against a
background of ethereal timeless jade green light (nominally motivated by the
presence of the neon sign outside the hotel room).2 It's an idealized image of
romantic embrace, as if the contradiction between present and past has been
“dialectically” overcome in a moment of sublime transcendence.
However, Bernard Herrmann’s liebestod-inspired Wagnerian theme, together with
Hitchcock’s ghostly light, reveals that this ideal is one that cannot be reconciled with
living historical reality, and Hitchcock’s camera movement reveals the conditions

under which this microcosm will unravel in the very act of being created. For if the
circling movement overcomes the contradiction between past and present in a
moment of sublime transcendence, it also suggests, by bringing the past back into the
present, the illusory nature of that transcendence. Judy participates in Scottie's
fantasy because she is in love with him and wants their love to be realized, but the
terms upon which their love is realized can only bring about its destruction. For at
the moment their past embrace at the Mission is replicated exactly, Scottie, the literalminded dreamer, is reminded, as it were by Hitchcock, the narrator, that if the
beautiful illusion that is Madeleine has now been completely recreated, then it must
have always already been an illusion, a fraud, though at this moment he is not yet
ready to fully comprehend the implications of this intuition.
This 360-degree camera movement culminates the pattern in Vertigo that links
camera movement to the spiral. The forward-tracking point-of-view shot, backwardtracking reaction-shot structure of the film creates a movement in which the object of
sight and desire, the lure for the gaze, keeps, as it were, receding from view. On her
way to visit Carlotta’s grave, Madeleine disappears from view into the flower-shop,
she disappears from view as she enters the church, she disappears from view again
as she leaves the church for the graveyard, and finally she vanishes altogether at the
McKittrick Hotel. Now, the idea of an object of allure that is forever out of reach,
suggests not the circle whose end joins its beginning but the vortex of a spiral whose
ends perpetually never connect. As critics have shown, the spiral motif in Vertigo
defines the meanings of vertigo in the film and links Scottie’s acrophobia to the
theme of sexual desire. By filming Scottie’s pursuit of Madeleine on the hills of San
Franscisco, Hitchcock builds a downward spiralling motif into the overall structure
of the chase.3 However, since Scottie does not initially connect with the object he
pursues, the spiral of pursuit remains for a time in a state of unstable equilibrium.
The slow languid movement of fascination and nascent desire is so intense in the
sequences of pursuit it evokes a “subjective” dream-like experience of time.
In the vertigo shot, the spiral structure, embodied in the staircase of the Mission San
Juan Bautista, suddenly stretches like a spring whose tension has collapsed. Scottie
will never reach his destination. Scottie's vertigo stretches to breaking-point the
thread linking his present desire to its future realization. We might speculate that
had Hitchcock the resources of computer-controlled micro-camera technology, he
would have filmed the movement of the camera in this shot as a spiral movement of
increasing velocity. In the actual film, the out-of-control spiral is brilliantly evoked
by the “movement” of the spiral staircase. In the spiraling 360-degree camera
movement that culminates Scottie’s re-creation of Madeleine, Hitchcock achieves the
opposite, mirror effect of the vertigo shot. Instead of being pulled into the vanishing
point in a manner that destroys the possibility of any relationship between self and
other, Scottie now, as it were, is magically united with his object of desire, in a
moment of suspended animation at the eye of a spiral where time is standing still.
The camera movement now registers not a moment in time, nor a sense of the loss of
time, or time receding, but the utopian sense of an infinite present - as if by achieving
his object of desire, Scottie has momentarily transcended the limits of mortality.
However, as we have seen, Hitchcock deftly reminds us that this is but an illusion by
momentarily transforming the mise-en-scène of the present in Judy’s hotel room to a
scene from the past in the stable of the San Juan Batista Mission. Exposed to the
doubt cast by memory, this imaginary temporal enclosure will inevitably unravel
back into a sense of history, of the passing of time, of separation, and of mortality.

Notes
1. For a close analysis of the car pursuit, see Charles Barr, Vertigo (London: BFI,
2002), pp. 40-44.
2. Hitchcock recalled this green light from the stage of his youth: “I remember the
green light - green for the appearances of ghosts and villains.” Quoted in Donald
Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius:The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press,
1983), p. 22.
3. See Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory
(New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 92.

What did Martin Scorsese write about "Vertigo"?

It's difficult to put into words exactly what Vertigo means to me as both a film lover
and as a filmmaker. As is the case with all great films, truly great films, no matter
how much has been said and written about them, the dialogue about it will always
continue. Because any film as great as Vertigo demands more than just a sense of
admiration - it demands a personal response.
A good place to start is its complete singularity. Vertigo stands alone as a Hitchcock
film, as a Hollywood film. In fact, it just stands alone - period. For such a personal
work with such a uniquely disturbing vision of the world to come out of the studio
system when it did was not just unusual - it was nearly unthinkable. Vertigo was and
continues to be a real example to me and to many of my contemporaries, in the sense
that it demonstrates to us that it's possible to function within a system and do work
that's deeply personal at the same time.
Vertigo is also important to me - essential would be more like it - because it has a hero
driven purely by obsession. I've always been attracted in my own work to heroes
motivated by obsession, and on that level Vertigo strikes a deep chord in me every
time I see it. Morality, decency, kindness, intelligence, wisdom - all the qualities that
we think heroes are supposed to possess - desert [James Stewart]'s character little by
little, until he is left alone on that church tower with the bells tolling behind him and
nothing to show but his humanity.
Whole books could be written about so many individual aspects of Vertigo - its

extraordinary visual precision, which cuts to the soul of its characters like a razor; its
many mysteries and moments of subtle poetry; its unsettling and exquisite use of
colour; its extraordinary performances by Stewart and Kim Novak - whose work is
so brave and emotionally immediate - as well as the very underrated work of
Barbara Bel Geddes. And that's not to mention its astonishing title sequence by Saul
Bass or its tragically beautiful score by Bernard Herrmann, both absolutely essential
to the spirit, the functioning and the power of Vertigo.
Of course, we can now hear Herrmann's score with clarity and breadth that it's never
had before, thanks to [Robert A. Harris] and [James C. Katz], the men who worked
on the beautiful, painstaking restoration of Vertigo. I'm happy that the Film
Foundation was able to play a part in making this important work possible, and I'd
like to thank Universal and Tom Pollock for allowing it to go forward and, of course,
I'd like to thank the American Film Institute for their invaluable contributions.

CRITICS ON VERTIGO
The mechanisms and motivations of the male power
drive are subjected to the most ruthless and
uncompromising critique. -- Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, 1986

In Vertigo, Hitchcock reveals himself to his audience, embodying, in Stewart's
character, his own obsessions and desire to make women over. -- Baseline
Of all Hitchcock's films the one nearest to perfection. Indeed, its profundity is
inseparable from the perfection of form: it is a perfect organism, each character, each
sequence, each image, illuminating each other. Form and technique here become the
perfect expression of concerns both deep and universal. -- Robin Wood, Hitchcock's
Films Revisited, 1989
[Hitchcock] was a great visual stylist in two ways: He used obvious images and
surrounded them with a subtle context. Consider the obvious ways he suggests
James Stewart's vertigo. An opening shot shows him teetering on a ladder, looking
down at a street below. Flashbacks show why he left the police force. A bell tower at

a mission terrifies him, and Hitchcock creates a famous shot to show his point of
view: Using a model of the inside of the tower, and zooming in while at the same
time physically pulling the camera back, Hitchcock shows the walls approaching and
receding at the same time; the space has the logic of a nightmare. But then notice less
obvious ways that the movie sneaks in the concept of falling, as when Scottie drives
down San Francisco's hills, but never up. And note how truly he "falls" in love. There
is another element, rarely commented on, that makes Vertigo a great film. From the
moment we are let in on the secret, the movie is equally about Judy: her pain, her
loss, the trap she's in... Novak, criticized at the time for playing the character too
stiffly, has made the correct acting choices: Ask yourself how you would move and
speak if you were in unbearable pain, and then look again at Judy. -- Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times
A complex tale with supernatural overtones... What is apparently seen may not be
what actually happened at all. The feeling of vertigo is communicated in the music,
in the overemphatic titles... and in a sequence which visualizes the delirium suffered
by the detective. Hitchcock uses a highly elaborate and oddly leisurely style in telling
this unlikely tale. -- Gerald D. MacDonald, Library Journal
Vertigo would be pretty preposterous if it weren't for Hitchcock. -- Isabel Quigly,
Spectator

Daily Telegraph (02/Dec/2006) - Filmmakers on film: Allen Coulter on Alfred
Hitchcock's Vertigo
(c) Daily Telegraph (02/Dec/2006)

Filmmakers on film Allen Coulter on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)
"Polanski's Chinatown is a film that I have purposefully and consciously imitated,"
says Allen Coulter, "but Vertigo is one that has got into my bloodstream. Every time I
reappraise things that I've done, the influence is there, time and time again."
Rewatching his first ever film, a 40-minute short called The Hobbs Case, Coulter
noticed the heavy shadow of Alfred Hitchcock. "It was a mystery about a man who
thinks he has witnessed a crime, and, in the course of the film, we discover that
nothing has happened - at least nothing that relates to him. Yet he develops this
paranoid delusion that he is implicated in the crime.

"I didn't realise the similarities while I was making it. In fact, the guy in my film
wears a brown suit identical to the one that Jimmy Stewart wears in Vertigo: he even
looks like him. I realised later that, in the same way that Stewart's character Scottie
remakes Kim Novak's character into the woman of his dreams, I was remaking this
actor into Jimmy Stewart."
Vertigo is the story of Scottie, an ex-cop employed to follow Madeleine (Novak), the
wife of an old friend, who is becoming increasingly concerned about her eccentric
behaviour. Scottie, who quit the police after developing a debilitating fear of heights,
becomes obsessed with Madeleine, but she then dies in mysterious circumstances. So
who is the identical woman that Scottie subsequently bumps into?
"I was a child when I first saw Vertigo," says Coulter, "and it was very disturbing
because I didn't really understand what was going on. However, I was mesmerised
by the erotic overtones and by the unbelievably potent mood that is established."
That mood, says Coulter, owes an enormous debt to Bernard Herrmann's thrilling
score. "Truly, it is one of the great film scores. I don't think any composer has ever
written music that so perfectly captures a combination of romance, eroticism and
deeply neurotic longing. As it poured over me, as a child, I found it
incomprehensible but moving and disturbing. I'm still curious that my parents
seemed comfortable with my seeing it."
Among the other key elements in the film is Stewart's performance. "He is," says
Coulter, "simply one of the great American actors.
"The character of Scottie is so troubled in some profound way; there's some kind of
emotional worm that's got into him. Very few American actors could have played
that role. Cary Grant couldn't, and I'm not even sure that Henry Fonda could have
done it.
"There is nobody else that I'm aware of who could play the two or three emotions
that are warring simultaneously within Scottie the way that Jimmy Stewart does.
Which, of course, makes him a great protagonist for Hitchcock, who had so many
strains pulling in different directions inside his own psyche.
"And Stewart was able to put all that into the world in such a deeply empathetic way
because he cries with stress better than any man. He suffers so well on screen."
The choice of San Francisco as the setting for the narrative was another inspired
decision, says Coulter. "It works brilliantly - the winding streets and hills, and the
way the vistas suddenly open out, all the ups and downs, the little alleyways, the
rather gothic, architecturally disturbing buildings.
"I think Hitchcock had a thing about hills: think of the house on the hill in Psycho.
Then, in Vertigo, Scottie is forever traversing the city, going downhill all the time as
he goes deeper and deeper into himself. It's as if Hitchcock is using San Francisco as
a psychological map."

And the director is unafraid to use well-known landmarks - the Golden Gate Bridge,
Coit Tower - to establish location, something, Coulter points out, that most seasoned
filmmakers would be at pains to avoid. "But he does it without seeming to resort to
clich."
Hitchcock also plays some strange visual tricks with the city. "I'm still not sure why
he did it, but the rear projection outside [Scottie's friend] Midge's apartment is in
black and white - a very odd choice. Perhaps what he is saying is that, in this movie,
San Francisco is not a real place; it is a state of mind, a state of emotion."
Vertigo is, Coulter believes, Hitchcock's most truthful film about himself, his most
revealing. Scottie's obsession with grooming Kim Novak's character echoes strongly
the director's own notorious obsession with blondes. Yet it is also true that Hitch
treats Novak - and her character - more sympathetically than any of his other leading
ladies.
As a director of the era-defining TV series Sex and the City, was Coulter ever tempted
to put his quartet of fiery New Yorkers through the emotional wringer? "I hope not.
Ultimately, I thought those stories were sad, and I always tried to include one or two
images that caught the poignancy of their situation."

Empire magazine (2006) - Vertigo

Plot
A detective falls for the woman he's trailing only for her to fall to her death from a
tower. He tries to mould a strikingly similar looking woman into his lost love with
unexpected results.
Review
The mesmerizing title sequence for Vertigo is a collage of human eyes juxtaposed
with Lissajous spirals, spidery whorls devised by a French mathematician to express
numerical equations. It was Saul Bass’ first for a Hitchcock film, and as it fades out
we are thrown into a scene that bears the Master’s signature as emphatically as the
opening credits bear Bass’: Jimmy Stewart, as police detective Scottie Ferguson, and
his partner in hot pursuit of a fugitive across the rooftops of San Francisco. In classic
Hitchcock fashion, the chase culminates in Scottie losing his footing on a steeply
sloping roof and dangling by his fingertips from a flimsy gutter. Attempting to save
him, his partner falls to his death, leaving Scottie staring in horror at his crushed
body on the pavement below. How Scottie escapes from his predicament is never
explained, but the image of him clinging desperately to the feeble lip of the building

stands as a metaphor for his perilous mental state throughout the events that follow:
in keeping with a well-founded terror of heights, Scottie is a man suspended over an
emotional and psychological abyss, into which he is doomed to plunge by a macabre
obsession with a woman who doesn’t exist.
The crowning artistic achievement of Alfred Hitchcock’s incomparable career as a
director, Vertigo is a strange and haunting film of breathtaking beauty, one that
lingers in the memory like a disturbing dream. It was based on a novel by French
writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac called Sueurs Froides (D’entre Les
Morts). Hitchcock and the two writers who worked on the script (Alec Coppel and,
most productively, Sam Taylor) transferred events from post-War Marseilles to
contemporary California but kept the basic plot intact.
The many intricacies of the plot prevent a detailed summary, but in essence it is the
story of a detective who falls in love with an enigmatic young woman he is tailing.
The woman, Madeleine, seems to be drawn towards suicide by an ancestral curse.
When she leaps to her death from the tower of an ancient Mission, the distraught
detective develops a dark fascination, and in seeing Madeleine’s likeness in another
woman, Judy, he attempts to recreate his lost love by moulding her into the image of
Madeleine. Amid a plethora of plot twists, it transpires that Judy and ‘Madeleine’
are, in fact, the same woman (both played with icy precision by Kim Novak), the
former impersonating the latter in an elaborate scheme to cover up the murder of the
real Madeleine. In the book the revelation that Judy is — or was — the phantasm he
is seeking drives the detective mad and he strangles her in a frenzy; in the film
Scottie, battling his fear of heights, watches her fall to her death from the tower of the
same Mission where he witnessed ‘Madeleine’’s fake suicide. It’s a stunning bookend
to the opening prologue, poetic justice for Judy’s complicity in the real Madeleine’s
murder and, for Scottie, having seen his chimerical lover die twice, a sanityshattering cataclysm.
Part murder mystery, part twisted love story, Vertigo was an intense experience for
all involved. Plagued by endless delays, partly due to Hitchcock’s ill health
(following emergency surgery for gallstones he interviewed actresses and chaired
script conferences from his sickbed), it was not a happy shoot. In the course of the
movie’s prolonged gestation, Vera Miles, Hitchcock’s original choice for
Madeleine/Judy, became pregnant and was replaced by Novak. Hitchcock took an
instant dislike to her, partly because she high-handedly informed costume designer
Edith Head that she would wear any colour except grey (Hitchcock insisted that
Madeleine be dressed in a tightly constricting grey suit), but mostly because she was
not his Madeleine, and he could never fully forgive her for it. He bullied her on set,
ordering her to walk in a specific way and, exercising his notorious streak of sadism,
stitching her into deliberately uncomfortable, tight-waisted costumes. There is an
eerie symmetry between Hitchcock’s treatment of Novak and Scottie’s moulding of
Judy. Nevertheless, the physical and emotional pressures of the shoot contributed to
the uncanny tone of the film and to the superb performances of the lead actors.
Stewart in particular, a Hitchcock stalwart, reveals hitherto untapped reserves of
vulnerability, anguish and rage. Novak too excels herself in a dual-dual role, the
identity crisis implications of which boggle the mind.

The entire film, its bright San Francisco locations given a gauzy veil of unreality by
cinematographer Robert Burks, is steeped in portentous melancholy. Certain scenes
have an overtly spectral quality that preys on the imagination. When we first see
‘Madeleine’ in the cemetery, she is bathed in a ghostly green light. Later, when at
Scottie’s behest Judy finally emerges as Madeleine, she is illuminated by the green
neon lights of a theatre marquee (inspired by Hitchcock’s memories of theatregoing
as a boy). The scene ends with the famous ‘revolving kiss’. In extreme close-up,
Scottie grabs Judy and kisses her violently, the camera appearing to whirl around
them as Scottie is transported by memories of Madeleine (in fact, it was the scenery
that was spinning). Here, as at other key moments, the recurrent theme of Bernard
Herrmann’s achingly poignant score swells to a crescendo. Herrmann’s music is
absolutely integral to the minor-key mood of the entire movie. The main theme has
often been compared with ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan Und Isolde, a favourite
of Hitchcock’s.
As was his wont, Hitchcock chose to shoot the most demanding scenes towards the
end of principal photography; the rooftop prologue was thus filmed almost on the
last day. The cameras rolled for the final time, however, on this:

The Seattle Times (15/Jun/2008) - Vertigo is still a dizzying, dazzling display of
moviemaking, 50 years later
Watching "Vertigo," Alfred Hitchcock's glorious, intoxicating tale of obsession, is like
entering a dream; time slows down in its green-colored light as the world is reduced
to a man, a woman, a weary hotel room and a sad, doomed passion. Darkly inviting,
it takes over its viewer in the way few movies do. Every time I watch it — and this
film is meant to be watched over and over — it sweeps me in with its thick, almost
humid atmosphere of yearning. As its final scenes go by, you watch it barely
breathing, becoming part of it, knowing the ending is inevitable but wishing it could
somehow change.
"Vertigo" celebrates is 50th anniversary this spring with a weeklong run at the Grand
Illusion beginning Friday, in a version beautifully restored in 1996. It's a chance to
revisit a film that never grows old. Set in a San Francisco whose wet streets and gray
fog speak of untold stories, "Vertigo" is both psychological thriller and mournful
romance. Scottie (James Stewart), a retired police officer, reluctantly accepts a strange
job: An old acquaintance wants his wife shadowed. The wife, Madeleine (Kim
Novak), seems so fragile that a gust of Bay Area wind might break her; she's a
whispery blonde obsessed with a long-dead ancestor. "Do you believe that someone
out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?" the
husband asks. Scottie answers, instantly and firmly, "No."But the character's geewhiz matter-of-factness (which nobody ever did better than Stewart; just the way he
mutters, "I don't want to get mixed up in this darn thing," in the husband's general
direction, is classic) quickly dissolves into the fog. The lonely Scottie falls, hard, for
the doomed Madeleine, and even the protests of his sensible pal Midge can't stop the
force of his unexpected emotion. (Midge, portrayed with delicate wit and sympathy
by Barbara Bel Geddes, happens to be quietly in love with Scottie herself; "Vertigo," it
turns out, is a journey through a hall of mirrors.) From there, the story swirls into

unexpected waters, which I'll let "Vertigo" newcomers discover, deliciously, for
themselves.
Based on the novel "D'Entre les Morts" ("From Among the Dead") by the French
mystery-writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, "Vertigo" was adapted
for the screen by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor. Hitchcock made the film in the
middle of a remarkable 1950s run of work, which included "Rear Window," "To
Catch a Thief," "Dial M for Murder," "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "The
Wrong Man" shortly before "Vertigo"; "North by Northwest" and "Psycho" followed
immediately afterward.
But, splendid as they are, none of these films captures imaginations and haunts
dreams the way "Vertigo" can. Part of the reason is Bernard Herrmann's magnificent
score — a lush, intricate orchestral work that uses unexpected combinations of
instruments to weave a blanket of mood. The hypnotic overture, played over the
Saul Bass-designed opening credits, seems to whirl us into a vortex; the music as
Stewart follows Novak through the San Francisco streets shimmers with questions;
the romantic sweep of sound, as they finally embrace, is achingly, decadently
beautiful, yet something in the chords speaks of mournfulness and doom. Herrmann
was known to consider the score his best work, though he had reservations about the
film at least initially, wondering aloud at one point why it wasn't set in someplace
hot and sultry like New Orleans, with Charles Boyer starring.
Stewart's performance, though, is astonishingly good; nothing the actor had done
before quite prepared audiences for his work here. Scottie's transformation is
thorough and devastating; he changes from laconic everyman to hollow-eyed ghost
before our eyes. In the film's final third, he walks the streets like a gaunt shadow.
What he's starved for seems gone — until, gazing at the object of his love, he's
suddenly fed and desperate for more. And Novak's vulnerable, heartbreaking
performance matches his; at times her character almost seems choked by her words,
trapped in a cage of secrets.
"Vertigo" is filled with the sort of detail that rewards rewatching: the audaciously
wordless 10-minute sequence early on that seems to go by in a heartbeat; the way
cinematographer Robert Burks' light catches Stewart's blue eyes, making him look
just the tiniest bit otherworldly and menacing; the long, sad hallway shot in which
Bel Geddes makes her exit from the film; the way Novak's smile, late in the film,
seems entirely drained of happiness. Now 50 years young, its strange beauty
deserves celebration. Go walk those streets with Scottie and develop a little "Vertigo"
obsession of your own.

Vertigo (1958) is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most powerful, deep, and stunningly
beautiful films (in widescreen 70 mm VistaVision) - it is a film noir that functions on
multiple levels. At the time of the film's release, it was not a box-office hit, but has
since been regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. The work is a
mesmerizing romantic suspense/thriller about a macabre, doomed romance - a
desperate love for an illusion.
It is an intense psychological study of a desperate, insecure man's twisted psyche
(necrophilia) and loss of equilibrium. It follows the troubled man's obsessive search
to end his vertigo (and deaths that result from his 'falling in love' affliction) and
becomes a masterful study of romantic longing, identity, voyeurism, treachery and
death, female victimization and degrading manipulation, the feminine "ideal," and
fatal sexual obsession for a cool-blonde heroine. Hitchcock was noted for films with
voyeuristic themes, and this one could be construed as part of a 'trilogy' of films with
that preoccupation:




Rear Window (1954)
Vertigo (1958)
Psycho (1960)

The film's screenplay, written by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, was based upon
the 1954 mystery novel D'Entre les Morts (literally meaning "From Among the Dead"
or "Between Deaths") by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Boileau and Narcejac
were also the authors of the story for French director Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les
Diabolique (1955) starring Simone Signoret. The film's theme of play-acting and/or
remaking a woman by male domination was also echoed in Greek legend, and in
George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (and My Fair Lady (1964)). The film spawned
clones with similar themes, such as Brian DePalma's Obsession (1976), and director
Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again (1991).

Poster taglines trumpeted: "Alfred Hitchcock engulfs you in a whirlpool of terror and
tension! - He Thought His Love Was Dead, Until He Found Her in Another Woman."
One of the film's posters featured an abstract vertigo effect - a spiraling shape with
the figures of a man and a woman falling into its center. Although much of the film's
interiors were shot in a Los Angeles studio, the exteriors were often shot on location
(mostly in San Francisco, including such spots as Fort Point, the Palace of the Legion
of Honor, Ernie's, and the graveyard at Mission Dolores).
Hitchcock's masterpiece was the recipient of only two Academy Awards
nominations, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Sound, and it was left
without a single Oscar statuette. Both James Stewart's performance and Kim Novak's
marvelous transformations - from Madeleine to Judy, and to Judy (pretending to be
Madeleine) - are rarely matched in the history of cinema. Her performance as a cool
and icy blonde recalled the way that Hitchcock often presented and treated his
ethereal leading ladies, who included Madeleine Carroll, Grace Kelly, Vera Miles,
and Tippi Hedren. The film was passed over by the Academy for the frothy musical
tale of Gigi (1958) (with a record nine Oscar wins, including Best Picture), about a
young woman trained to be a courtesan of a wealthy suitor.

The credits, accompanied by eerie music by Bernard Herrmann, play over Saul Bass'
amazing title sequence that combines both live action and animation. The film begins
with a fragmented and shifting image of a woman's blank and expressionless face;
first, an enormous close-up of the lower left portion of her face, then her lips, then
her frightened eyes darting left and then right, and then a straight-on closeup of her
right eye as the entire screen takes on a bright reddish hue. The title of the film
"Vertigo" zooms out slowly from the depths of her widening pupil. Spiraling,
vertiginous, animated designs (of various configurations and shapes) replace the
closeup of the iris, and the remainder of the credits plays over a black background
after the pupil is entered and the eye fades away. The background returns to the eye
(still reddish) and the final credit emerges from its center: "Directed by Alfred
Hitchcock."
In the frightening opening prologue-sequence (a rooftop chase), an object divides the
screen horizontally. Two hands grab the ladder rung - the top bar of a roof ladder on
a fire escape - as a fugitive is being chased across a flat San Francisco city rooftop. A
uniformed SF policeman (Fred Graham) and another dark-suited, plainclothes
pursuer (later identified as James Stewart) follow the man. Two shots are fired. The
fugitive and the policeman successfully jump across a gap onto a high-angled, redtiled, Spanish style tenement roof, but the third man doesn't make the jump and is
left clinging and dangling from a weakened gutter drain pipe by his fingertips. The
policeman turns back to offer help and leaves the criminal to escape.
Holding onto the creaking and collapsing gutter, the hanging man is frozen by his
fear of heights (acrophobia). He looks down many stories into the deadly abyss
below and experiences a dizzying sensation called vertigo.

[Director Hitchcock used two simultaneous devices to achieve the effect and create
an approximation of the disoriented psychological state of the character - the camera
both tracks away from the subject while also zooming towards it. The simultaneous,
opposing movements - a forward zoom and a reverse tracking shot - also represent
the attraction and repulsion that the main protagonists experience in their
relationships. The camera effect is used in this scene, and in the first mission stairwell
sequence.]
When the policeman attempts to reach out his hand and rescue his buddy ("Give me
your hand"), he loses his balance, and slips and falls to his death [the first of three
horrifying screams and falls in the film]. The terrified man is left hanging there to
witness the death. He gazes down on the pinwheel-shaped body of the policeman
flattened on the pavement. The image of the man suspended there - dangling
helplessly from the rooftop and downward-looking - [his rescue is never displayed]
will be the overriding, symbolic, emotional and psychological position that he will
remain in throughout the rest of the film. Part of his own psyche and stability also
falls with his partner.
The second sequence also begins with an object dividing or bi-secting the screen,
now vertically (the main character's cane balanced in mid-air). The hero's first words
express his metaphysical angst: "Ouch, ouch." In a comfortable, well-lit, San
Francisco hillside apartment [near North Beach, ostensibly at Vallejo and Jones
streets], a commercial artist/lingerie designer Marjorie "Midge" Wood (Barbara Bel
Geddes), a blonde woman with an unflattering pair of glasses, is working at her
drafting table easel in her studio/living room. She is drawing a supportive,
cantilevered bra for an advertisement. In a chair next to her is the San Francisco man
who survived the gutter pipe experience.
A disabled John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) [the initials of his name, 'SF,'
mirror the abbreviation for the vertiginous city] is recuperating with psychological
and physical scars. Midge asks him about his "aches or pains." He exults, hopefully,
that he will be a "free man" the following day when his painful ("it binds") but
therapeutic feminine corset is removed and he can dispose of his cane "out the
window" - an ironic choice of words. "I'll be able to scratch myself like anybody else."
A "bright, young lawyer" with training as a police officer, he has had to "quit the
police force" after blaming himself for his colleague's death and suffering from a preexisting condition of acrophobia. Guilt-ridden, he fears he may cause the death of
more innocent people:
Scottie: It's because of this fear of heights I have, this acrophobia. I wake up at night
seeing that man fall from the roof and I try to reach out to him, it's just...
Midge: It wasn't your fault.
Scottie: I know. That's what everybody tells me.
Midge: Johnny, the doctors explained to you.
Scottie: I know. I know. I have acrophobia which gives me vertigo and I get dizzy.
Boy, what a moment to find out I had it!
Midge: Well, you've got it and there's no losing it. And there's no one to blame, so
why quit?
Scottie: You mean and sit behind a desk, chair-bound...

Midge: ...where you belong.
Scottie: What about my acrophobia? What about... Now, suppose, suppose I'm sitting
in this chair behind a desk, here's the desk, and a pencil falls from the desk down to
the floor, and I reach down to pick up the pencil - BINGO - my acrophobia's back.
Midge: (Laughing.) Oh, Johnny-O.
He has resigned early due to his fears and due to accepting the guilt for his fellow
officer's death, but vows his independence and stability:
Scottie: I'm a man of independent means as the saying goes. Fairly independent.
Midge: Hmm, mmm. Well, why don't you go away for a while?
Scottie: You mean to forget? Oh now, Midge, don't be so motherly. I'm not gonna
crack up.
He also complains to comforting, "motherly" Midge about the Mozart music
(repeated later in the film when attempts are made to therapeutically cure his
psychological 'crack up' with music). While Midge is sketching a new brassiere
design, he asks her a direct question. [Her career of designing brassieres supports the
argument that she is a maternal figure who desires him to be a more mature "big
boy," but she is ultimately rejected when he chooses another woman.] She smartly
answers without any air of mystery or femininity:
Scottie (pointing out a bra hanging next to her work area): What's this doo-hickey?
Midge: It's a brassiere. You know about those things. You're a big boy now.
Scottie: I've never run across one like that.
Midge: It's brand new. Revolutionary uplift. No shoulder straps. No back straps. But
does everything a brassiere should do. Works on the principle of the cantilever
bridge...An aircraft engineer down the Peninsula [a pun on Silicone Valley] designed
it. He worked it out in his spare time.
Scottie: Kind of a hobby. Do-it-yourself type thing.
Then, they slip into a discussion of their relationship together - she is his dependable
friend and his former college days' ex-fiancee who had called off their 3-week college
engagement. [She was a former college sweetheart and would-be lover, but he never
felt emotionally attached to her.] Midge queries his questioning methods, moving
quickly from the subject of brassieres to her active love life - "That's following a train
of thought." He suggests his own 'suspended' state in his work and in his noncommittal relationships by mentioning that he is "available":
Scottie: How's your love life, Midge?
Midge: That's following a train of thought...Normal.
Scottie: Aren't you ever gonna get married?
Midge: You know there's only one man in the world for me, Johnny-O.
Scottie: You mean me. But we were engaged once though, weren't we?
Midge: Three whole weeks.
Scottie: Yeah, good-ol' college days. But you were the one that called off the
engagement, do ya remember? I'm still available. Available Ferguson.
Scottie mentions that he has received a phone call message from another old college
friend, ship-building tycoon Gavin Elster, after many years absence following the

war. Before Scottie leaves, he suddenly wonders what Midge meant by "there's no
losing it," referring to his acrophobia. She had learned from her doctor that the only
cure for the "disease" of vertigo may be death. Midge offers him a prophetic warning:
...only another emotional shock would do it, and probably wouldn't. You're not
gonna go diving off another rooftop to find out!
To "lick" his vertigo and to experiment and test out a theory, he tries different heights
and progresses through them one at a time. Scottie believes he may be able to
acclimatize himself and be cured. As she supervises, as a mother might do, he first
starts out with a small stepstool. He hopes to gradually get used to the sensation as
he chants: "I look up, I look down":
We'll start with this...What do you want me to start with? The Golden Gate Bridge?
Now watch. Watch this. Here we go. There. (He steps up.) There. Now. I look up, I
look down. I look up. I look down. There's nothin' to it.
But when she brings in a taller kitchen stepchair and he experiments with it, he
breaks out in a sweat on the last step and gently faints into Midge's comforting arms,
looking down into the deep abyss - at the side of the building where he was left
hanging and faced death. He is still 'suspended' between his work and becoming
involved (or personally committed) with Midge.
From there, the scene cuts to Scottie, who is to meet with his old college friend - the
well-dressed, prosperous, handsome Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore).
[Director Hitchcock appears in his traditional cameo on the sidewalk outside Elster's
Mission District shipyard company - he walks left to right across the frame, carrying
a black trumpet horn case that looks like an oversized flashlight. As Hitchcock exits
the frame, Scottie walks into the frame from the right and enters Elster's shipbuilding
company office.]
A guard points out the location of Elster's office (located on the Embarcadero) in the
Mission District. The wood-paneled office is decorated with a few suspended
chandeliers. There, Scottie immediately learns - after a dissolve - that Gavin married
into the "dull" shipbuilder business and has taken responsibility for it: "My wife's
family is all gone. Someone has to look after her interests." Elster laments how San
Francisco has changed from a bygone era, and uses four qualities to spell the urban
area ("color, excitement, power, freedom"). He sits in front of a large window (similar
to Midge's cityscape picture window) that shows the immense size of his modern
business with large cranes moving freight - he tempts Scottie (a "hard-headed Scot")
to experience more excitement in his diseased or flawed life:
The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast..I should have liked to
have lived here then - color, excitement, power, freedom.
Scottie notices old maps and woodcuts from the wild days of San Francisco. Elster,
who knows about Scottie's accident, retirement, and subsequent weakened
psychological state from newspaper reports [and using it to his full advantage]
explains how he was sorry to read about Scottie's harrowing incident on a rooftop

and his newly-discovered vertigo. Scottie describes his disability and a little
background on his life:
Elster: Is it a permanent, physical disability?
Scottie: No, no. It just means that I can't climb stairs that are too steep or go to high
places like the bar at the Top of the Mark. But there are plenty of street-level bars in
this town. (Scottie refuses an offer of a drink - it's too early in the day)...I never
married. I don't see much of the old college gang. I'm a retired detective and you're
in the ship-building business.
Gavin proposes to hire him as a private detective "as a special favor" to trail his
strange, neurotic, potentially suicidal wife, to help protect her from some harm that
may come to her from "someone dead." Elster sets up Scottie by asking him (as the
camera zooms back):
Do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take
possession of a living being?
At first, Scottie is comically skeptical and quickly refuses, although Elster believes
that his wife is deeply-disturbed or possessed. Scottie harshly suggests a doctor's
services: "Take her to the nearest psychiatrist or psychologist or neurologist, or
psychoanaly...or maybe just the plain family doctor. I'd have him check on you too."
Elster realizes it sounds "idiotic" to Scottie who has always been "the hard-headed
Scot(t)." Elster insists how he isn't making this up. He explains how she often goes
into trance-like states and doesn't know where she has been, or she wanders as if
she's lost:
Elster: She'll be talking to me about something. Suddenly the words fade into silence.
A cloud comes into her eyes and they go blank. She's somewhere else, away from
me, someone I don't know. I call her, she doesn't even hear me. Then, with a long
sigh, she's back. Looks at me brightly, doesn't even know she's been away, can't tell
me where or when.
Scottie: How often does this happen?
Elster: More and more in the past few weeks. And she wanders - God knows where
she wanders. I followed her one day, watched her coming out of the apartment,
someone I didn't know. She even walked a different way. Got into her car and drove
off to Golden Gate Park. Five miles. Sat by the lake, staring across the water at the
pillars that stand on the far shore. You know, Portals of the Past. Sat there a long time
without moving. I had to leave, get back to the office. When I got home that evening,
I asked her what she'd done all day. She said she'd driven out to Golden Gate Park
and sat by the lake, that's all.
Scottie: Well. (Getting up.)
Elster: The speedometer on her car showed that she'd driven ninety-four miles.
Where did she go? I've got to know, Scottie, where she goes and what she does
before I get involved with doctors.
Elster insists that he only wants Scottie to do the job, to follow her and discover
where Madeleine goes and what she does, before consulting a professional doctor and
"committing her to that kind of care." [He is skeptical about medical attention for
some unknown reason.] Not wishing to do the job himself, Scottie suggests the

services of a private detective agency: "Look, this isn't my line...I'm supposed to be
retired. I don't want to get mixed up in this darn thing." But when Elster insists that
he needs his trusted, ex-college "friend" to trail her, Scottie is persuaded to go to
Ernie's Restaurant that night to "see" (catch a glimpse) of her dining with Gavin
before they leave for the opera.
The revelation of Madeleine in the next scene in Ernie's restaurant is masterfully
directed. [Ernie's supper club was an actual landmark, located at 847 Montgomery St.
in San Francisco, but closed in September, 1995. In fact, the interior and exterior shots
of Ernie's in the film were sets. The restaurant was noted for its striking red interior,
and later appeared in the Woody Allen film Take the Money and Run (1969).] Scottie is
seated at the bar in a darkened, red-walled restaurant, stylishly decorated with red
and white flowers. There, he surreptitiously sees Gavin at a table with the lovely,
elegant, and beautiful blonde Madeleine (Kim Novak) wearing a dark, nakedlybackless evening dress with green trim [green is a predominant color associated with
Madeleine - and Judy - throughout the film]. While the camera moves toward their
table, Madeleine's back is kept toward the camera. As she leaves the restaurant,
Scottie, half in profile, has his nervous, "ghostly" first encounter with the woman. His
first view of the beautiful female is incredibly transcendental - she is half-seen in a
close-up profile as she deliberately pauses behind him [to display herself to him] and
awaits Elster, with the radiant light reflecting off her hair. Fascinated by and
attracted to the woman that he has heard fantastic stories about, he starts to
romantically and dependently "fall" in love with the ethereal, inaccessible and
complex woman - already obsessed and desiring her. He decides to accept Gavin's
assignment to silently pursue his wife - without even meeting again with Gavin.
[This is the start of the hero's loss of objectivity and his obsessive, blurry descent into
dream-like, timeless, and silent space as he pursues the mysterious female through
the city's sites - a shop, an old Spanish mission, a graveyard, an art gallery, an old
house/hotel, the waters near the Golden Gate Bridge, and then to an ancient forest of
redwood Sequoia trees, etc. - places that have connections with the past or with
death.]
The next day, in fantasy-like, soft-focused diffused light, he trails the gray-suited
woman in her light-green (!) Jaguar sedan all over San Francisco as she drives around
and around (almost always driving down streets, going left then right, left then
right). He first starts to follow her from her high-rise apartment building on Nob Hill
to a flower shop [a significant location and motif] on Grant Avenue through a
narrow back alley and back door, where she buys a red and white nosegay bouquet
as he voyeuristically peers at her with an ingenious split-screen effect. He sees her in
a mirror reflection (on the left) through a cracked doorway (on the right) [the mirror
is a means to see into the underworld and past]. Next stop is Mission Dolores - a
Spanish mission with a backyard garden cemetery, where he enters a dark arched
doorway and finds her after winding and turning through the cemetery path. In soft,
diffused, surrealistic and hazy sunlight, she is standing and gazing in front of the
grave headstone of "Carlotta Valdes born December 3, 1831 died March 5, 1857."
[Carlotta died at the age of 26 years old.]
Her next destination is the art gallery at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
where she is hypnotized, motionless and trance-like in front of a portrait painting of

a woman named Carlotta Valdes [her ancestor's portrait]. Scottie notices that her
single lock of swirling (vertigo-like) hair and hand-corsage bear a striking
resemblance to the bouquet and hairstyle in the painting. Finally, he trails her to an
old hotel on Eddy Street, the McKittrick Hotel, where she stands in a second-floor
window facing the front. [Later, at the Empire Hotel, Judy similarly stands in a
second-floor window.] He is puzzled by her strange, mysterious wanderings and
trance-like behavior. Scottie enters the Hotel to follow the ethereal woman - he looks
up the stairs past a magnificent, suspended hanging chandelier with crystal
pendants.
He asks the hotel manager-landlady (Ellen Corby) to identify the tenant of the room
on the second floor. She describes the two-week old occupant of the rented room
whose name is Carlotta Valdes: "I can't imagine that sweet girl with that dear
face...Valdes, Miss Valdes. Spanish, you know...Sweet name, isn't it? Foreign, but
sweet...She just comes to sit, two or three times a week. I don't ask questions, you
know, as long as they're well-behaved." Scottie is startled when told that Miss Valdes
hasn't been there that day. He again stares at the chandelier as the landlady climbs
the stairs to check the room - and then climbs up the optically-steep staircase himself
(without - uncharacteristically - any disorientation) when she offers to show him the
empty room to prove it.
From the second-story window, Scottie notices that Madeleine Elster's car has also
mysteriously disappeared, and later finds it parked back in front of her apartment
building, with the flower nosegay on the car's dashboard. The detective is
thoroughly confused, and naturally wonders whether Madeleine is indeed an
illusion - a spirit, a ghost, or a phantom. [She is to be discovered later, of course, as
an imposter and unreal "Madeleine." Scottie ultimately learns that he is following
Elster's mistress, not his wife, and he has unwittingly become a pawn in his friend's
plot to murder his real wife.]
In Midge's apartment, Scottie pours himself a whiskey drink and then asks Midge for
a recommendation of an authority on San Francisco history for research purposes,
focusing more on "the small stuff, you know, people you've never heard of." She
attempts to clarify his question:
Oh, you mean the gay old Bohemian days of gay old San Francisco. Juicy stories like
who shot who in the Embarcadero in August 1879.
But Midge is suspicious of his search and wonders what he is looking for: "Hey,
you're not a detective anymore. What's going on?" But Scottie doesn't explain that he
wants to learn more about CAt the Argosy Book Shop, the local-history expert and
proprietor Pop Liebel (Konstantin Shayne), in a European accent, tells them historical
information about Carlotta Valdes, the former mistress of a San Francisco capitalist.
Supposedly, a wealthy, powerful, but abusive man [with power and...freedom] built
the house that is now the McKittrick Hotel for Carlotta. He took their out-of-wedlock
child and banished her there when he tired of her. After being abandoned and
having her child abducted, she became lonely, went mad and committed suicide:
Oh yes, I remember. Carlotta, beautiful Carlotta, sad...It (the McKittrick Hotel) was
hers. It was built for her many years ago...by...the name I do not remember, a rich

man, powerful man...It is not an unusual story. She came from somewhere small to
the south of the city. Some say from a mission settlement. Young, yes, very young.
And she was found dancing and singing in cabaret by that man. And he took her and
built for her the great house in the Western Addition. And, uh, there was, there was a
child, yes, that's it, a child, a child. I cannot tell you exactly how much time passed or
how much happiness there was, but then he threw her away. He had no other
children. His wife had no children. So, he kept the child and threw her away. You
know, a man could do that in those days. They had the power and the freedom. And
she became the sad Carlotta, alone in the great house, walking the streets alone, her
clothes becoming old and patched and dirty. And the mad Carlotta, stopping people
in the streets to ask, 'Where is my child?' 'Have you seen my child?' (Midge responds:
"Poor thing.")...She died...by her own hand. There are many such stories.
As Pop Wiebel comes to the end of his explanation, the scene becomes increasingly
darker as a strange veil of darkness descends over everything.
Midge demands that Scottie explain what he is working on in exchange for
recommending Pop Liebel. After driving her home, she speculates that his search has
something to do with Gavin, even guessing that the mad Carlotta has returned
("come back from the dead") and taken possession of Elster's wife. Logically, she
thinks his (and Elster's) theory is preposterous. She laughs and scoffs at him, but
then begins to understand when Scottie explains that Madeleine is a pretty woman.
Midge: Is she pretty?
Scottie: Carlotta?
Midge: No, not Carlotta. Elster's wife.
Scottie: Yes, I guess you'd consider that she would...
Midge: I think I'll go and take a look at that portrait.
After Midge has left, Scottie looks in his Palace of the Legion of Honor museum
guidebook at a reproduction of the "Portrait of Carlotta" - a superimposition of
Madeleine's profile dissolves over it.
Scottie meets Elster again for a drink at Elster's club. There, Elster explains in hushed
and secretive tones the complete and tragic story of Carlotta Valdes who may be
exerting a malevolent influence over Madeleine. Carlotta's story relates to his wife's
preoccupation with wearing the family jewels as she often sits in front of a mirror.
My wife Madeleine has several pieces of jewelry that belonged to Carlotta. She
inherited them. Never wore them - they were too old-fashioned, until now. Now
when she's alone, she takes them out and looks at them, handles them gently,
curiously. Puts them on and stares at herself in the mirror. Then goes into that other
world, is someone else again.
Elster also explains her suicidal tendencies and psychological imbalance - he worries
that Madeleine may kill herself. Supposedly, she is possessed by the spirit of Carlotta
- her great grandmother - who went mad and killed herself after her child
(Madeleine's grandmother) was taken from her. Scottie thinks that her obsession
with the past makes rational sense, as he similarly becomes sucked up into the vortex
of the past:

Well, I think that explains it. Anyone could become obsessed with
the past with a background like that!
Elster then tells Scottie a bombshell - Madeleine is unaware of
Carlotta. Even though she wanders to all the Valdes landmarks:
"she never heard of Carlotta Valdes." Madeleine's mother had not
told her about Carlotta (the grandmother also went insane and took
her own life - and "her blood is in Madeleine"). Elster describes
Madeleine as "no longer my wife." Scottie takes another stiff drink,
exclaiming: "Boy, I need this."
Another day as he continues to follow Madeleine along her familiar
routes, she drives downhill through Park Presidio Drive along Fort Point Road down
to the water's edge of the San Francisco Bay, at a location on the promenade just
under the Golden Gate Bridge. In a memorable image, she meditates and then tears
and throws flower petals from her Carlotta-like nosegay into the water. Then
without warning, she throws herself into the dark waters and attempts to drown
herself. Astounded by the sight, Scottie rushes to the water, removes his jacket, dives
in and saves her. He carries her limp body back to her car. Breathlessly, he tries to
revive her, speaking her name for the first time: "Madeleine, Madeleine." Since she
remains unconscious, he takes her back to his apartment (mostly furnished with
antiques). [His apartment is located at 900 Lombard Street.]
In his apartment that night, the camera pans from Scottie (wearing a green sweater)
at the fireplace stoking a fire, to his sofa where he drinks coffee, to the kitchen where
Madeleine's clothes dry on the line, to the open bedroom door where she sleeps in
his bed. He gets up when he hears her talking in her sleep - mumbling Carlotta's
ritualistic lament: "Have you seen my child?" When the sound of the telephone in his
bedroom awakens her (Gavin Elster calls and is told to call back later), he speaks to
her for the first time. She is fearful and startled to find herself in a strange man's bed
(and presumably naked). With a slight smirk - since he had previously seen her
naked as he assisted her, Scottie chivalrously offers his maroon robe for her to wear.
[His undressing of Madeleine - and redressing of Judy are complementary
opposites.] When she seductively and gracefully appears at his bedroom door
wearing his silky robe and posing for him, they have their first conversation as
Scottie begins to be bewitched. The music's haunting tone accentuates the sensual
mood, as she questions Scottie about what is going on:
Scottie: You'd better come over here by the fire where it's warm.
Madeleine: What am I doing here? What happened?
Scottie: Well, you fell into San Francisco Bay. I, uh, I tried to dry your hair as best I
could. Your things are in the kitchen. They'll be dry in a few minutes. Come on over
by the fire.
Although wary of him, she is very poised. She thanks him for saving her, and
remembers having been at Old Fort Point out at the Presidio and fainting by the
water's edge. Scottie then questions her about what she remembers, but she can't
recall having been at the Palace of the Legion of Honor earlier in the day. While she
sits by the fire on cushions, she asks him to fetch her purse so she can properly pin
up her hair [a foreshadowing of an obsessive demand he later makes of her]. He is

obviously entranced by the spell she puts over him, and instantly infatuated by her
beauty and bewitched by her mysterious nature. Although she identifies herself, he
keeps facts about his profession and his relationship to Elster concealed. Scottie only
admits that he has tendencies - like she does - to "wander about":
Madeleine: It's lucky for me you were wandering about. Thank you. I've been a
terrible bother to you.
Scottie: No you haven't.
Madeleine: ...You shouldn't have brought me here, you know.
Scottie: Well, I didn't know where you lived.
Madeleine: You could have looked in my car. Oh but then you didn't know my car,
did you?
Scottie: No, I knew which one it was. It's right outside here now, but I didn't think
you wanted to be taken home that way.
Madeleine: No, you're right. I'm glad you didn't take me home. I wouldn't have
known you. Thank you. But I don't know you and you don't know me. My name is
Madeleine Elster [her initials ME ironically reflect her identity problem - she has no
identity other than the one Elster creates for her, and subsequently murders, and her
identity is often merged into her ancestral suicidal spirit - Carlotta Valdes].
Scottie: My name's John Ferguson.
Madeleine: A good strong name. Do your friends call you John or Jack?
Scottie: Oh, John mostly. Old friends call me John. Acquaintances call me Scottie.
Madeleine: I shall call you Mr. Ferguson.
Scottie (objecting): Oh, gee whiz, I wouldn't like that. Oh, no, and after what
happened this afternoon, I should think maybe you'd call me Scottie, maybe even
John.
Madeleine: Then I prefer John...And what do you do, John?
Scottie: Oh, just wander about.
Madeleine: That's a good occupation. And you live here alone? One shouldn't live
alone.
Scottie: Some people prefer it, you know.
Madeleine: No, it's wrong. (Looking directly at him.) I'm married, you know.
Scottie: Will you tell me something? Has this ever happened to you before?
Madeleine: What?
Scottie: Falling into San Francisco Bay.
Madeleine (laughingly): Oh, no. No it's never happened before...
He grabs to get Madeleine some more coffee, and pauses for a sexually-charged
moment when his hand touches hers above the coffee cup. Their intimacy is
interrupted by a phone call from Gavin Elster. While Scottie is speaking to him on
the phone in the bedroom, Madeleine gathers her clothes and quickly vanishes.
Gavin ominously warns: "Madeleine is 26. Carlotta Valdes committed suicide when
she was 26." As Madeleine pulls away in her car, Midge has driven up and noticed
her - but is unable to meet her (they never appear in the same scene together). Midge
is rueful and bitterly comments to herself about how abnormal and unreal Scottie's
search has become:
Well now, Johnny-O. Was it a ghost? Was it fun?

When Scottie comes to the front door to look out, Midge drives away. [Midge is
uninteresting, plain, and predictable, when compared to the elusive, sensuous, and
enigmatic Madeleine.]
The next day, Scottie pursues Madeleine again in his car winding all over the streets
of San Francisco, seemingly going around in circles and always down hills - finally
ending up in front of his own apartment! [She appears ghostly and evasive and often
disappears around corners and exits rooms throughout the entire film.] In a ghostly
white coat with black gloves, she puts something in his mailbox (an apology for the
inconvenience she caused the day before). Scottie drives up, gets out and greets her
at his front door - and she soon apologizes in person:
Scottie: A letter for me?
Madeleine: Yes, hello.
Scottie: Oh. I worried about you last night. You shouldn't have run off that way.
Madeleine: Well, I, I suddenly felt such a fool.
Scottie: Well, I wanted to drive you home. Are you all right?
Madeleine: Oh yes, yes I'm fine. No after effects. But as I remember now, the water
was cold wasn't it?
Scottie: Yeah, it sure was.
Madeleine: What a terrible thing for me to do. You're so kind. It's a formal thank you
note and a great big apology.
Scottie: Well, you've nothing to apologize for.
Madeleine: Oh yes I do. The whole thing must have been so embarrassing.
Scottie: Not at all, I enjoyed it, talking to you.
Madeleine: Well uh, I enjoy talking to you.
Madeleine explains that she couldn't mail the note because she didn't know his
address. That's why she delivered it in person - she recognized his location by the tall
Coit Tower landmark. This causes Scottie to muse: "That's the first time I've been
grateful for Coit Tower." He hopes that they "can meet again sometime" (as she
explained in the note) - as they already have. Scottie asks if he could join her on her
'wanderings' - something he describes as his own occupation:
Scottie: Don't you think it's a waste, to wander separately?
Madeleine: Only one is a wanderer. Two together are always going somewhere.
Scottie: No, I don't think that's necessarily true.
He is slowly becoming possessed by her and attracted to her, following her (or
separately) going nowhere as she vanishes and reappears - he falls under her
mysterious spell and is in love with her enigmatic beauty. They become mutually
fascinated by each other and spend more and more time together.
They experience a car trip together to the evocative, centuries-old redwood sequoias.
In a dark, moody, giant redwood forest, in the filtered, impressionistic light of the
woods where they have wandered, she speaks about the ancient, towering trees and
how they remind her of her own smallness and mortality. She gravely comments on
how history continually repeats itself - [there are other repetitive images, colors, and
actions throughout the film, i.e., the reincarnations - and linkages between Carlotta,
Madeleine, and Judy]:

Madeleine: How old?
Scottie: Oh, some 2,000 years or more.
Madeleine: The oldest living things.
Scottie: Yes. You've never been here before?
Madeleine: No.
Scottie: What are you thinking?
Madeleine: Of all the people who've been born and have died while the trees went on
living.
Scottie: Their true name is Sequoia sempervirens, 'always green, ever-living.'
Madeleine: I don't like it.
Scottie: Why?
Madeleine: Knowing I have to die.
Pointing to the concentric, spiraling rings in a cross-section of the stump of one of the
felled trees in a display showing thousands of years of history (historical events,
wars and treaties from 909 AD to 1930 when the tree was cut down), she indicates
with a black-gloved finger the place where Carlotta's life had spanned a short period
of time. She enigmatically traces the times of her birth and her death:
Somewhere in here I was born. And there I died. It was only a moment for you, you
took no notice.
In a semi trance-like or dreamy state, Madeleine walks away from him through the
'ever-living' trees and disappears again, causing Scottie to become even more
intrigued with her mysterious nature. When he discovers her leaning and backed up
against one of the trees, he interrogates her with direct questions to learn what she is
thinking - with increasing desperation and urgency about her spells:
Scottie: Madeleine, Madeleine where are you now?
Madeleine: Here with you.
Scottie: Where?
Madeleine: Tall trees.
Scottie: Have you been here before?
Madeleine: Yes.
Scottie: When? (No answer.) When? When were you born?
Madeleine (distraught): Long ago.
Scottie: Where? When? Tell me. Madeleine, tell me!
Madeleine (flipping her head back and forth): No.
Scottie: Madeleine, tell me where? Where do you go? What takes you away? When
you jumped into the bay, you didn't know where you were. You guessed but you
didn't know.
Madeleine: I didn't jump. I didn't jump I tell you. You told me I jumped.
Scottie: Why did you jump? Why did you jump?
Madeleine: Oh I can't tell you.
Scottie: Why did you jump? What was there inside that told you to jump?
Madeleine: No please. Please.
Scottie: What? What?
Madeleine: Please don't ask me. Please don't ask me. Get me away from here.
Scottie: Shall I take you home?

Madeleine: Somewhere in the light. (Pleading) Promise me something? Promise you
won't ask me again? Please promise me that.
She explains how she is threatened and tormented by demands within her psyche
(and her own personal pain).
After begging him to take her to "somewhere in the light," they appear on a
Monterey Bay ocean cliff next to a classic Monterey pine. Scottie follows rapidly and
joins her, and vows being "committed" to her and "responsible" for her:
Madeleine: Why did you run?
Scottie: Well, I'm responsible for you now. You know, the Chinese say that once
you've saved a person's life, you're responsible for it forever. So, I'm committed. I
have to know.
Madeleine: There's so little that I know.
Madeleine is haunted by recurring images and dreams involving death and
darkness. As she hugs a craggy, wizened tree by the seaside, she likens her life to a
walk down a long corridor into darkness. In her hallucinatory description, she
includes all of the spots along her daily wanderings around San Francisco. The one
time she came to the corridor's end was by the bay. After Scottie's prodding, she also
remembers the hotel room, and a freshly dug grave waiting for her:
Madeleine: It's as though I-I were walking down a long corridor that once was
mirrored. And fragments of that mirror still hang there. And when I come to the end
of the corridor, there's nothing but darkness. And I know that when I walk into the
darkness, that I'll die. I've never come to the end. I've always come back before then,
except once.
Scottie: Yesterday? (She nods agreement.) And you didn't know. You didn't know
what happened till you found yourself in the...you didn't know where you were. But
the small scenes, the fragments of the mirror, do you remember those?
Madeleine: Vaguely.
Scottie: What do you remember?
Madeleine: There's a room and I sit there alone, always alone.
Scottie: What else?
Madeleine: A grave.
Scottie: Where?
Madeleine: I don't know. It's an open grave, and I, I stand by the gravestone looking
down into it. It's my grave.
Scottie: But how do you know?
Madeleine: I know.
Scottie: Is there a name on the gravestone?
Madeleine: No. It's new and clean and waiting.
Finally, Madeleine relates another dream that has ambiguous significance - one of a
Spanish tower, bell, and a garden. Scottie digs further to find the "key" to her
mysterious visions, as she concludes that she may be mad:
Madeleine: There's a tower and a bell and a garden below. It seems to be in Spain, it's
in Spain, but so often it's gone.

Scottie: A portrait. Do you see a portrait?
Madeleine: No.
Scottie: If I could just find the key, the beginning and put it together...
Madeleine: ...to explain it away? There is a way to explain it you see. If I'm mad, that
would explain it, wouldn't it?
Suddenly, she appears frightened and runs down the rocks to the water's edge. He
races after her and they embrace - in a perfect synthesis of both death and erotic
romance within their relationship:
Madeleine: Oh Scottie. I'm not mad. I'm not mad. I don't want to die. There's
someone within me and she says I must die. Oh Scottie, don't let me go.
Scottie: I'm here. I've got you.
Madeleine: I'm so afraid. (They kiss passionately as the ocean waves crash on the
rocks behind them.) Don't leave me. Stay with me.
Scottie: All the time.
Vowing to protect her from harm (and thereby possess and identify with her, even if
it means personal annihilation due to her death wishes), they again cling to each
other and kiss passionately as the turbulent waves once more crash melodramatically
into the rocks behind them. The climactic scene fades to black.
The next scene opens in Midge's studio apartment where a red-sweatered Midge
paints. Scottie has been invited to visit one night because of her "desperate urge" to
see him. She wonders why she hasn't seen him or been able to contact him on the
phone: "For a man who has nothing to do, you're certainly a busy little bee." When
she is curious about his whereabouts, he only vaguely communicates with her what
he has been doing. He describes to her how he passes the time: "Just
wandering...round about." Midge explains how she has returned to her "first love painting." [Or could her "first love" be Scottie himself?] He congratulates her:
I always said you were wasting your time in the underwear department.
In profile (similar to Madeleine's appearance), Midge displays her latest portrait something that she describes as "not exactly" a "still-life." It is a caricatured and
satirized portrait of herself as a smiling, bespectacled Carlotta Valdes (that she
copied from the Palace of the Legion of Fine Arts guidebook). The portrait parodies
herself as Carlotta - it forces Scottie to see her substituted in the place of the woman
he is obsessing about - Carlotta. [The self-abusive substitution is a bold, prophetic
hint of the film's mystery, as she remakes herself in Madeleine's image.]
Scottie reacts negatively to the de-mystified, objective, anti-romantic Carlotta
portrait. He shakes his head resentlfully and unhappily: "It's not funny, Midge," and
he promptly leaves. After she has alienated him and he has left, Midge pulls at her
hair: "Marjorie Wood, you fool! Idiot...stupid, stupid, stupid." She defaces the
artificial image in the picture and condemns herself for being so stupid - and for not
being Madeleine, as she throws her paintbrush at her reflection in the picture
window. Scottie wanders home through the darkness of the night, lit by a changing
red and green traffic light.

Madeleine visits Scottie early the next morning at dawn - she rings his doorbell and
appears silhouetted in the darkened doorway. She walks into the light of his
apartment. Upset and frightened, she tells him that she has had a recurrence of the
strange dream of the bell tower in an old Spanish village or mission. Scotties wishes
to reassure her, through his version of reality therapy, that she's in the here-and-now:
It was a dream. You're awake. You're all right now.
He has her describe the dream in great detail - he completes her description and tries
to make it reality:
Madeleine: It was so very clear for the first time, all of it...It was a village square in a
green with trees and an old white-washed Spanish church with a cloister. Across the
green, there was a big gray wooden house with a porch and shutters and a balcony
above, a small garden, and next to it a livery stable with old carriages lined up
inside...At the end of the green, there was a white-washed stone house with a lovely
pepper tree at the corner...
Scottie: And an old wooden hotel from the old California days? And a saloon, dark,
low ceilings, with hanging oil lamps?
Madeleine: Yes.
Scottie: It's all there. It's no dream. You've been there before. You've seen it.
Madeleine: No never!
Scottie recognizes the setting as San Juan Bautista's Spanish Mission, about 100 miles
south of San Francisco. It is preserved as a historical museum exactly as it was 100
years earlier. Madeleine insists that she has never been there. Scottie insists that she
think hard about what frightens her so:
I stood alone on the green searching for something. Then I started to walk to the
church. Then the darkness closed in and I was alone in the dark, being pulled into
the darkness, never to wake up.
Protective of her, Scottie tells her that they will visit the mission later that day. He
hopes that visiting the real-world California mission will end her nightmares, cure
her fears, dispel the dream's power, or prompt her memories. The mission is a
perfect symbol, a place of California's religious past, ritual, and spiritual retreat that
will be their destination - a way to return to Madeleine's ancestral roots:
You're gonna be all right now, Madeleine. Don't you see? You've given me something
to work on now! I'm gonna take you down there to that mission this afternoon and
when you see it, you'll remember when you saw it before, and it'll finish your dream.
It will destroy it. I promise you. All right?
As well as finding out about Madeleine's past at the mission, Scottie will also be able
to confront his own fears, obsessions, and phobias. He leads her to the door - in an
overhead shot.
As they drive toward the mission, passing through a row of tall trees, a gray-suited
Madeleine (with a small bird pinned on her chest) gives an enigmatic, emotional look
toward Scottie. In the memorable sequence at the mission, everything is as she
remembered it in the nightmarish dream - a village square and green, a cloistered
Spanish church, a two-story gray wooden house, and a livery stable. Inside the dark

stable, as she sits in an antique carriage, he prompts her to remember when she was
there before:
Scottie: Madeleine, where are you now?
Madeleine: Here with you.
Scottie: And it's all real. It's not merely as it was 100 years ago, or a year ago, or six
months ago, or whenever it was you were here to see it. Now, Madeleine, think of
when you were here.
In a trance-like, depressed state, she describes past childhood memories (of horses
kept in the stable on the church grounds) from a long time ago - she is seemingly
possessed by Carlotta:
There were not so many carriages then. There were horses in the stalls: a bay, two
black, and a gray. It was our favorite place. But we were forbidden to play here.
Sister Teresa would scold us.
To ground her in the present, Scottie tries to find evidence that she isn't in her
mystical past. He quickly finds what she has described in the stable - a wooden gray
horse - and exclaims: "You see, there's an answer for everything! Madeleine. Try. Try
for me." He speaks to her from her profile-side, as she stares straight ahead toward
the camera. He helps her down from the carriage and then they embrace and kiss
each other again.
While they kiss, he tells her: "I love you, Madeleine" as she glances across the
courtyard toward the mission's church and bell tower. [The original Spanish mission
at San Juan Bautista didn't have a bell tower, so it was added with trick matte
photography.] She hurriedly confesses her own love for him, but becomes frantic
that "there's something I must do." He grabs ahold of her to try to stop her retreat
while vowing: "no one possesses you":
Scottie: I love you, Madeleine.
Madeleine: I love you too. It's too late.
Scottie: No, no, we're together.
Madeleine: It's too late, there's something I must do.
Scottie: No, there is nothing you must do. There is nothing you must do. No one
possesses you. You're safe with me.
Madeleine (more frantically): No, it's too late.
Crying, she assertively pushes him away, disengages from his possessive grasp (both
emotionally and physically), and runs across the courtyard to the mission under a
gray clouded sky. He catches up to her on the village green and holds her tightly, as
she explains how she must go through with things as planned [she now speaks as
Judy rather than as her assumed character of Madeleine] and not fall in love with
him:
Madeleine: Look, it's not fair. It's too late. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. It
shouldn't have happened.
Scottie: But it had to happen. We're in love. That's all that counts.

Madeleine: Look. Let me go. Please let me go.
Scottie: Listen to me. Listen to me.
They struggle. She declares her love for him (pretended and real) in a final moment
before he loosens his grip:
Madeleine: You believe I love you?
Scottie: Yes.
Madeleine: And if you lose me, then you'll know I, I loved you. And I wanted to go
on loving you.
Scottie: I won't lose you.
Madeleine (insisting): Let me go into the church - alone.
Scottie: Why?
After one more kiss, she turns, looks up, and rushes into the church. He glances up at
the bell tower for an instant, and then decides to chase after her. She starts to climb
up the bell tower's crude, winding and rickety wooden staircase. His acrophobia and
vertigo slow his climb after her up the spiraling stairs. [The scenes of Scottie's vertigo
and disorientation in the tower are again made real by a simultaneous reverse dollyout (pull back) shot, and a forward zoom-in shot, first used by director Hitchcock.]
Scottie pauses momentarily and looks downward from the landing where he is
standing - he experiences a dizzying, disorienting, and paralyzing fear of falling.
And then when he reaches almost to the top, there is a shrieking scream [a pretend
scream to accompany the fall or a scream of outrage to stop the contrived plot?] and
a gray-clothed body resembling Madeleine's is seen through a side tower window
falling to her death far below. Scottie looks down through the tower opening and
sees a still body lying dead on the adjacent rooftop below. [Scottie is forced to
helplessly watch, for the second time, someone fall to their death.] It is a stunning,
vertiginous death - totally unexpected and disorienting. Tense and sweating
profusely, he impotently climbs back down the stairs to the ground-level door. From
an angle high above the church, the overhead camera views a reduced-sized Scottie
exiting the church as nuns rush to the site and officials climb a ladder to remove the
body from the cloister roof.
In the second-floor room of the gray wooden house across the green from the
mission, the town hall, a coroner's inquest/hearing is immediately held by police, the
coroner and other legal officials regarding the death. The coroner (Henry Jones)
describes the suicide - as he does so, Elster is cleared of responsibility for not
reporting his wife's mental instability. But the coroner implicates and condemns exdetective Ferguson's indirect causation of the accident, his unanticipated "weakness"
and his "fear of heights" that made him "powerless when he was most needed." Even
while knowing Madeleine's "suicidal tendencies," Scottie had a "lack of initiative" in
saving her (in a second accident involving a fall). Following the suicide, Scottie also
strangely disappeared from the scene, claiming that he "suffered a mental blackout
and knew nothing more until he found himself back in his own apartment in San
Francisco several hours later." Although foul play is discounted, the coroner presents
the jury with a final conclusion while verbally criticizing Scottie: "Or you may believe
that having once again allowed someone to die, he could not face the tragic result of
his own weakness and ran away."

The jury quickly reaches a decision - "The jury finds that Madeleine Elster committed
suicide while of unsound mind." Following the inquest, Elster apologizes for the
harsh words of the coroner and consoles Scottie after the verdict. Elster announces
his own intentions to leave the country permanently:
Sorry Scottie, that was rotten. He had no right to speak to you like that. It was my
responsibility. I shouldn't have got you involved. No, there's nothing you have to say
to me. I'm getting out Scottie, for good. I can't stay here. I'm going to wind up her
affairs, and mine, and get away as far as I can. Europe perhaps. I probably never will
come back. Goodbye, Scottie. If there's anything I can do for you before I go? There's
no way for them to understand. You and I know who killed Madeleine.
After the hearing, Scottie is broken and distraught. He visits Madeleine's grave.
Unlike Madeleine's imaginary dreams, he suffers from real nightmares, flashing
lights, vivid, and shattered, exploding images of Carlotta's corsage bouquet (in an
artificial, animated cartoon). The camera records various other images including his
own vanishing and reappearing face, a disturbing, hallucinatory view of a "live"
Carlotta between Elster and himself at the courtroom window, Carlotta's
locket/necklace, and the cemetery headstone and her open grave. He sinks into the
bottomless pit accompanied by a frightening silhouette of his body falling into the
mission roof (similar to the fall experienced by the uniformed policeman).
Presumably, in the process of identifying with her death or joining her in death (or
wishing to die in her place), he himself dies by being taken into a blinding white
light of nothingness. He is tormented by visions of the vertigo effect - these visions
cause him to wake up petrified in fear. He is also filled with grief and mourning - he
blames himself for not stopping or saving her, unable to conquer his fear of heights
to save her.
Scottie suffers a nervous breakdown and is institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital.
Midge presents him with a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart record because it's
therapeutically like a "broom that sweeps the cobwebs away," but he remains passive
and still by the window. She tries to joke with him about all the varieties of musical
tastes she has for him: "I have music for dipsomaniacs, and music for melancholiacs,
and music for hypochondriacs. I wonder what would happen if somebody got their
files mixed up." Then, she tries to cheer him up and reassure him, but he is
unresponsive, catatonic and deathly corpse-like:
Oh, Johnnie, Johnnie. Please try. Try, Johnnie. You're not lost. Mother's here...John-O,
you don't even know I'm here, do you?
He doesn't even know she is there when she kisses him goodbye - he is completely
paralyzed and possessed with psychological unbalance.
When the time of her visit is up, she speaks to the doctor in his office, learning that
Scottie has been clinically diagnosed as "suffering from acute melancholia, together
with a guilt complex. He blames himself for what happened to the woman." It may
take from six months to a year to cure him: "It really could depend on him." To
complicate the issue, squarely placing some degree of blame and 'responsibility' on
Scottie, Midge states that he was and still is in love with the dead Madeleine, and
that Mozart won't cure him at all. She begins to cry, turns away from the doctor's

office, and forlornly walks down the gray corridor out of his life. She pauses before a
window - before darkness closes in. Defeated, she realizes her utter inadequacy and
helplessness in reaching him. [Her departure echoes Madeleine's words by the sea:
"I'm walking down a long corridor...and when I come to the end of the corridor,
there's nothing but darkness." This is Midge's last appearance in the film.]
The next scene opens with a long pan across the city of San Francisco. After Scottie is
released, he drifts aimlessly for a while, shattered and searching for his lost love - he
behaves somewhat "mad" - recalling Pop Liebel's words about "mad Carlotta." He
revisits the places where he often saw Madeleine - first Elster's apartment (where her
Rolls Royce is now parked, although sold to a new owner). A one-way sign indicates
his obsessive direction. Then, he ventures to Ernie's Bar and the Palace of the Legion
of Honor, hoping that he will find her alive. Three times, he imposes dreams on
reality - imagining three Madeleine look-alikes (at the apartment, at Ernie's, and in
the museum) who resemble her.
At a florist's shop, one of the first places he first saw Madeleine, he is startled by
other reminders of Madeleine such as her flower corsage. And then he spots a fourth
Madeleine look-alike - in profile - on the street outside the shop. She is a dark, redhaired woman who is wearing a tight green sweater dress (voluptuous without a
brassiere). She bears a remarkable facial resemblance to his cool blonde, dead love the sophisticated Madeleine, although she is more of a counterfeit. She wears gaudy
makeup and appears coarser, less ethereal and cheaply provocative. [Judy is a
Madeleine imposter - in actuality, she is Elster's mistress who was taught to pretend
she was "Madeleine" Elster. The real wife Madeleine was killed by Elster and her
corpse was thrown off the bell tower.] Scottie follows her to her transient hotel, the
Empire Hotel on Post Street - he notices her at her second-story window [an image
similar to his spotting Madeleine in the second-story window of the McKittrick
Hotel] where she lives alone.
Scottie rushes upstairs to her door half-way down a corridor (with a FIRE ESCAPE
sign prominent in the background). He speaks to her at her door, where she
responds with a combination of fear, bemusement, defiance and fascination. She
harshly and abruptly accuses him of either being a Gallup pollster, a hotel resident,
or a guy trying to pick her up. He pleads with her: "I just want to talk to you...Listen,
I'm not going to hurt ya. Honest - I promise. Please." He explains that she reminds
him of someone. She mocks his familiar pick-up line [a phrase probably used on her
by Gavin Elster when he proposed his deadly plot]:
I heard that one before too. I remind you of someone you used to be madly in love with,
but then she ditched ya for another guy. And you've been carrying the torch ever
since. Then you saw me and something clicked.
Although she is not "far wrong" in describing his situation, she wants to close the
door on him. He desperately asks to be heard, so she invites him in with the door left
open. He is both pathetic and menacing to her as he approaches - and learns that her
name is Judy Barton (Kim Novak, playing both women). She is "just a girl" - an
uncultured, crude sales girl who works at Magnin's, who originally came from
Salina, Kansas [strikingly close to the name of the largest town in California closest to

the mission - Salinas, and evocative of Novak in her role in Picnic (1955) - with a
Kansas locale]. He obsessively repeats his objective:
Scottie: I just want to know who you are.
Judy (describing herself a second time): Well, I told you. My name is Judy Barton. I
come from Salina, Kansas. I work at Magnin's and I live here. My gosh, do I have to
prove it?
[Their conversation occurs in front of the mirror in Judy's room - suggestive of the
double, mirrored identity that she projects.] Exasperated, she shows him her Kansas
and California driver's license identifications, and then asks: "You want to check my
thumb prints? You satisfied?" Then, she softens when she realizes that he's "got it
bad," and then wonders: "Do I really look like her? She's dead, isn't she? I'm sorry."
She apologizes for yelling at him earlier when she senses that his lost love is dead.
She briefly describes her family history while pointing to two black-and-white
photographs on her dresser - she explains how she left her working-class family to
wander - [it's a life story that curiously parallels the one of Carlotta's daughter]:
That's me with my mother. And that's my father. He's dead. My mother married
again, but I didn't like the guy, so I, I decided I'd see what it's like in sunny
California. I've been here three years. Honest.
As he leaves, Scottie asks her a favor to join him as company for dinner:
Scottie: Will you have dinner with me?
Judy: Why?
Scottie: Well, I just feel that I owe you something after all this.
Judy: No, you don't owe me anything.
Scottie: Well, will you then, for me?
Judy: Dinner and what else?
Scottie: Just dinner.
Judy: Cause I remind you of her?
Scottie: Because I'd like to have dinner with you.
Judy: Well, I've been on blind dates before. Matter of fact to be honest, I've been
picked up before.
She agrees to have dinner with him an hour later, but she hopes that it isn't just
because she reminds him of his former love.
After he leaves [the camera remains with Judy - one of the few times in the film that
the camera deserts Scottie and identifies with her], the camera is placed behind
Judy's head. She slowly turns to the right (into profile) and then stares slightly above
the camera. The screen darkens and reddens (similar to the reddish hue in the
opening credits sequence) as Judy remembers the scene at the Mission - in a
revealing flashback. [Hitchcock reveals the surprise solution to the mystery to all but
the hero/protagonist.] Madeleine/Judy is seen running up the mission stairs. Gavin
Elster throws his wife's body from the tower just as Madeleine/Judy appears at the
top of the stairs and then grabs Madeleine/Judy to cover her mouth. [The murder
plot is as deceptive as the suicidal woman who didn't die - she actually never
existed!]

When the flashback is over, Judy closes her eyes, goes to her closet for her suitcase,
and prepares to pack (touching the gray suit she last wore with Scottie when she
impersonated Madeleine), but then decides to compose a letter to him describing the
whole deceptive plot against him (narrated in voice-over). The camera pans from her
profile to a frontal view - slowly spiraling around her in a prolonged close-up. In the
letter, she confesses that she was hired by Elster to pose as his wife - due to her
remarkable resemblance to his wife:
Dear Scottie: And so you found me. This is the moment that I've dreaded and hoped
for, wondering what I would say and do if I ever saw you again. I wanted so to see
you again just once. Now I'll go and you can give up your search. I want you to have
peace of mind. You have nothing to blame yourself for. You were the victim. I was
the tool, and you were the victim of Gavin Elster's plan to murder his wife. He chose
me to play the part because I looked like her, dressed me up like her. He was quite
safe because she lived in the country and rarely came to town. He chose you to be a
witness to a suicide. Carlotta's story was part real, part invented to make you testify
that Madeleine wanted to kill herself. He knew of your illness. He knew you'd never
get up the stairs to the tower. He planned it so well. He made no mistakes.
As Elster's mistress, Judy was part of the hoax in an ingenious plot to provide the
police with an unimpeachable witness at the suicide of Elster's wife - Scottie was the
perfect candidate to attempt to 'protect' the phony Madeleine. Scottie also had been
led to mistakenly believe that Madeleine harbored suicidal tendencies, and would
testify to that effect at the coroner's inquest. Elster knew of Scottie's vertigo and that
he couldn't reach the top of the tower to halt her lethal jump. There, Elster had plans
to do away with his wife under circumstances that falsely implied that she had
committed suicide.
In the last part of the letter, Judy also admits that the only mistake in the whole plan
was that she fell in love with Scottie. Judy/Madeleine knows that Scottie is still
madly in love with Madeleine and that somewhere inside her, sheis Madeleine:
I made a mistake. I fell in love. That wasn't part of the plan. I'm still in love with you.
And I want you so to love me. If I had the nerve, I'd stay and lie, hoping that I could
make you love me again as I am, for myself, and so forget the other and forget the
past. But I don't know whether I have the nerve to try.
Feeling ambivalent, she declares her own love and decides to make Scottie love her
(as she is), but she also knows that she may not have "the nerve" to try to gain his
love - he may uncover the truth. Then she stands up and pulls herself together, folds
and rips the letter in pieces, and puts her suitcase away (and also hides Madeleine's
gray dress in the back of the closet - is she repudiating her 'Madeleine identity' with
this action?). Out of love for Scottie, she decides not to run away, but to stay and see
him one final time. She prepares for dinner by wearing a very different dress - a
figure-revealing purple one.

While at dinner at Ernie's (where he first saw Madeleine), Scottie ignores Judy when
he is distracted by the sight of a gray-suited woman who looks like Madeleine. After

dinner, Scottie says goodnight to Judy at her door and asks to see her the next
morning. Judy explains that she can't leave her job, joking: "What'll I live on, my oil
wells in Texas?" but Scottie assures her that he will take care of her. She politely
refuses: "Thanks very much, but no thanks...Why I understand, all right. I've been
understanding since I was 17. And the next step is?" Scottie wishes to be with her to
see her as much as he can: "We could just see a lot of each other." Silhouetted in the
bluish-green light from the neon sign of the hotel, Judy wonders whether he will fall
in love with her as Judy, and not as Madeleine:
Judy: Why? Because I remind you of her? It's not very complimentary. And nothing
else?
Scottie: No.
Judy: It's not very complimentary either.
Scottie: I just want to be with you as much as I can, Judy.
Judy relents after his persistence and sincerity, and decides that she could phone the
store the next day with an excuse to miss work.
Trying to relive his experiences with Madeleine through Judy, an almost complete
confusion of dream and reality, Scottie - with Judy - visits the places he followed
after Madeleine. The next day, they walk around the exterior grounds of the Palace
of Fine Arts, and by the water and pillars of the Portals of the Past described by
Elster. On the lawn, Judy notices a couple kissing (a contrast to their own platonic
relationship - she later tells him: "You don't even want to touch me"). That evening,
they go dancing at a nightclub. The following day, Scottie buys Judy a corsage, and
then suggests that they go to buy her some clothes at Ransohoffs, an expensive salon
on Post Street. Falling in love with her, he suggests clothes - the gray suit - like
Madeleine wore. He obsessively tries to mold, remake and groom Judy into the dead
woman's image. [Elster was the first to manipulate and remake Judy into a
fraudulent Madeleine in a parallel manner.]
Knowing exactly what he wants to re-create Madeleine's look (on the day that she
'died'), Scottie becomes preoccupied with her clothing and appearance. He displays a
detailed knowledge of women's clothing - even the saleslady remarks about his
incredible attention to detail. His desire to design and make her into his idealized
image of Madeleine becomes a fetish. Judy protests that some of the clothing that he
is choosing is not to her liking (because it might help him learn the truth, but she
can't tell him that Madeleine never existed!). In front of the store's mirror, their
images are doubled as they argue about his demands to remake her. Exasperated by
his strict demands for specific items, she clearly understands his motives and fights
against his demands to see her as someone else, but naively hopes to win him on her
own and make him love her for herself (rather than as Madeleine again):
Judy: You're looking for the suit that she wore for me. You want me to be dressed
like her.
Scottie: Judy, I just want you to look nice. I know the kind of a suit that would look
well on you.
Judy: No, I won't do it.
Scottie: Judy, Judy it can't make that much difference to you. I just want to see you...

Judy: No, I don't want any clothes. I don't want anything. I want to get out of here.
Scottie: Judy, do this for me.
Just then, the sales lady finds the exact gray ladies suit he has been asking for. She
finally agrees to his demands (and thereby denies her own identity) when she gives
in and wears what he requests - after he pleads with her to make him happy. After
trying more clothes - a dinner/evening dress ("short, black, with long sleeves and a
kind of a square neck") and brown shoes - they return to his place.
In Scottie's apartment, Judy appears frightened that Scottie loves his lost-love
Madeleine more than herself, the real-life Judy Barton. She pleads with him to love
her for who she is and to stop manipulating her and psychologically stripping her of
her own identity ("what good will it do?"). Judy insists on not being a reminder of his
lost love, also fearing that she will become the Madeleine of the deadly plot and may
be recognized. Pathetically, she finally gives in, allowing him to exploit her and
change her appearance. Anguished, she agrees to fulfill his dream if he'll love her:
Judy (crying and with tears in her eyes): Why are you doing this? What, what good
will it do?
Scottie: I don't know. I don't know. No good, I guess, I don't know.
Judy: I wish you'd leave me alone. I want to go away.
Scottie: You can, you know.
Judy: No, you wouldn't let me. And I don't want to go.
Scottie: Judy, Judy, I'll tell you this. These past few days have been the first happy
days I've known in a year.
Judy: I know. I know because, 'cause I remind you of her and not even that very
much.
Scottie: No, no Judy, Judy, it's you, too. There's something in you...
Judy: You don't even want to touch me.
Scottie (turning away): Yes. Yes, I do.
Judy: Couldn't you like me, just me the way I am? When we first started out, it was
so good. We had fun. And then you started in on the clothes. Well, I'll wear the darn
clothes if you want me to - if-if you'll just, just like me.
[Through this and the next sequence, the soundtrack plays a paraphrased version of
Wagner's "Liebestod" from Tristan and Isolde (1865), a dissonant, mournful,
bittersweet musical piece.] In front of his picture window, Scottie focuses obsessively
on her hair color and wonders about changing its color to blonde. She cries out,
anxiously: "Oh no!" He pleads with her to make him happy by again doing what he
requests:
Scottie: Judy, please, it can't matter to you!
Judy: If, if I let you change it, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love
me?
Scottie: Yes, yes.
To pacify him, she obeys his wishes to be transformed. She agrees to the hair color
change, as they move over to the fire.

At the beauty salon the next day, he discusses the hair color and styling changes with
the beautician, and Judy also has her nails and makeup redone - to match
Madeleine's. He prowls around in her hotel room waiting and longing for her
transformative arrival. When she emerges in the corridor of her hotel room and
enters her room [she is resurrected from the end of the corridor this time!], she is
wearing all the proper clothes and has the matching hair color, but she has persisted
in retaining her own identity by wearing her hair down. Scottie criticizes her hairdo:
"It should be back from your face and pinned at the neck. I told her that. I told you
that." He begs again for Judy to pin her hair the way Madeleine did: "Please Judy."
Angry with him, but resigned to this final change [one that signals the death of
'Judy'] because she loves him, she goes into the bathroom to fix this last detail - to
make herself look exactly like his memory of someone else!
In a memorable sequence, when Judy has finally made the full transformation into
Scottie's image of Madeleine, the camera focuses on Scottie pacing around before she
emerges from the bathroom. He is both hopeful, fearful, doubtful, and yearning for
his dream persona to become real. Slowly, the bathroom door opens, and we see
Scottie turn from having his back to the camera, then to a profile view, and then to a
straight-on view. His hopeful eyes are filled with wonder and emotion in an
unforgettable image, as he (and the viewer) sees the reborn reincarnation of his lost
love. [Her appearance approximates the exact way Madeleine emerged from his
bedroom door in his apartment.] Anxious to please him because of her love for him,
Judy slowly walks toward him like Madeleine would have. She assumes the actions,
expressions and movements of "Madeleine" in order to please him and have him
want her - she is the fabricated image of a woman created as a hoax by Elster to
masquerade a murder plot.
We see from Scottie's point of view - the ghostly figure appears bathed in the eerie
green-tinged neon light [created by a special diffusion camera filter] reflected from
the hotel sign outside the window. Her metaphysical, spiritual figure assumes solid
shape as she moves out of the ghostly green light and crosses the floor to him, to
surrender to him. They embrace and kiss passionately. The camera pans and swirls
completely around them as they kiss, causing the walls of the room to appear to turn
and change. Their background surroundings dissolve and place them in the past - in
the dark livery stable in Scottie's subjective imagination - the location at San Juan
Bautista where he had attempted to cure Madeleine's hallucinations. [The sensation
must be the same distorted, dizzying but gratifying feelings Scottie is experiencing vertigo.] Completely lost in the dream, overlapping fantasy and reality as Judy
becomes one with Madeleine, Scottie also surrenders to her and she clings to him.
The loving couple continue kissing passionately in front of the pale, greenish haze of
the window.
Later (after consummating their love?), they are sitting together and relaxing in her
hotel room. They have a planned dinner at Ernie's once again ("after all, it's our
place," she reminds him and she's "suddenly hungry"). Scottie has in mind kissing
her, but she puts him off a little while with an ironic choice of words: "Oh no, you'll
muss me...It's too late. I've got my face on." Judy is dressed in her new black
evening/dinner dress - she is completely submerged within Madeleine's identity.
She accepts her fate as the living memory of Scottie's past love. The magical spell and
transformation are broken when Judy fatally asks Scottie to link her necklace/locket

around her neck ("Help me with this, will you?"), but forgets that the red ruby
heirloom - naturally part of the Madeleine character - was pictured in the Carlotta
portrait in the museum and had once belonged to Madeleine.
While attaching the locket, he asks: "How do you attach this thing?" And she asks:
"Can't you see?" Obviously, Scottie does see - after a close-up view of him in profile he notices the necklace in the reflection in the mirror while attaching the locket from
behind. Immediately, he realizes that Judy is Madeleine (imagined in a momentary
flashback of the necklace in the portrait and Madeleine gazing at it from a museum
bench), that there was no Madeleine, and that he had been tricked by Elster. Judy,
forced to imitate Madeleine by Elster, has now been discovered by Scottie as not the
real Madeleine but a false fantasy.
Coincidentally, she tells him that she's "ready" and asks for him to rough her up:
"First, muss me a little" after having kept him away earlier. Scottie responds more
coldly as she hugs him: "Oh Scottie, I do have you now, don't I?" but actually obliges
her request to "muss" her up. He persuades her that they will drive out of town and
down the Peninsula for dinner (as a way to get free of the past and to try and
understand how and why he had been tricked). After traveling many miles, and
traversing through the same tall trees they had driven through earlier, she becomes
increasingly anguished about their inevitable confrontation with the truth:
Judy: Where are you going?
Scottie: One final thing I have to do, and then I'll be free of the past.
By the time they arrive at the fated mission tower where Madeleine died, it is dusk
and she is frightened and nervous. Anger and frustration mount in Scottie's mind as
Judy expresses sheer fear and hysteria mixed with shame. He demands that she "be
Madeleine for a while" so that both of them will "be free":
Judy: Scottie, why are we here?
Scottie: I told you. I have to go back into the past once more, just once more for the
last time.
Judy: Why? Why here?
Scottie: Madeleine died here, Judy.
Judy: I don't want to go. I'd rather wait here.
Scottie: No, I need you.
Judy: Why?
Scottie: I need you to be Madeleine for a while. And when it's done, we'll both be
free.
Judy: I'm scared.
At the scene of the crime, he grabs her arms and firmly holds her - he tells her about
his lost love Madeleine and their final moments together:
No, no, I have to tell you about Madeleine now. Right there (pointing at the green in
front of the livery stable), we stood there and I kissed her for the last time. And she
said, 'If you lose me, you'll know that I loved you and wanted to keep on loving you.'
And I said, 'I won't lose you.' But I did. And then she turned and ran into the
church...and when I followed her, it was too late.

Then, he forcefully pulls Judy into the church to recreate the death scene where he
experienced his acrophobia and vertigo, and where he had earlier chased after
Madeleine. She cries out: "I don't want to go in there." But he drags her into the
church (where he had chased after her) and they start up the lower stairs of the tower
together. He wants to be freed of the past, cure his vertigo, and remove his guilt as he
commands her up the vertical tunnel of stairs:
I couldn't find her. And then I heard footsteps on the stairs. She was running up to
the tower. Right here. You see, she was running up the stairs and through the trap
door at the top of the tower. And I tried to follow her, but I couldn't get to the top. I
tried but I couldn't get to the top. One doesn't often get a second chance. I want to
stop being haunted. You're my second chance, Judy. You're my second chance.
Judy cries out: "Take me away." He grips her firmly and menacingly, commanding
her: "You look like Madeleine now. Go up the stairs...Go up the stairs! Go up the
stairs, Judy, and I'll follow." Midway up the stairs, where he experienced severe
vertigo and saw Madeleine's body fall in the window, he continues to brutalize her,
telling her that he knows the truth of her deception: "The necklace Madeleine [Judy],
that was the slip. I remember the necklace."
He insists on climbing the winding, claustrophobic staircase all the way to the top of
the tower, although Judy cautions: "You can't, you're afraid." Scottie believes he can
make it: "Now we'll see. We'll see. This is my second chance." Then, he accuses her of
the worst part of the plot, explaining how he now understands what was pulled on
him by Elster. While he berates her, he almost strangles her on the stairs. Then, she
admits her duplicitous role in the plot:
Scottie: But you knew that day that I wouldn't be able to follow you, didn't you?
Who was up there when you got up there? Elster and his wife?...Yes, and she was the
one who died! The real wife, not you! You were the copy. You were the counterfeit,
weren't you? Was she dead or alive when you?
Judy: Dead. He'd broken her neck.
Scottie: He'd broken her neck. He wasn't taking any chances was he? So when you
got up there, he pushed her off the tower. But it was you that screamed. Why did
you scream?
Although forced to confess [thereby assuming 'Judy's' identity during the
confession], she tries to convince him that she herself was a victim and that she
wanted out of the crime - "I wanted to stop it." But he thinks she may be acting and
tricking him again. Scottie realizes that she was rehearsed and trained and made up
to be a fraud in the same way that he had rehearsed and trained her. Although he
thought he could find freedom and be a "free" man after finding Madeleine again, he
now realizes that he was the actual victim that was manipulated and used by Elster:
[There are four victims of men in the film - the real Madeleine, Judy, Carlotta, and
Scottie himself.]
You played the wife very well, Judy. He made you over, didn't he? He made you
over just like I made you over. Only better. Not only the clothes and the hair. But the
looks and the manner and the words. And those beautiful phony trances. And you
jumped into the Bay, didn't you? I'll bet you're a wonderful swimmer, aren't you?

Aren't you? Aren't you? And then what did he do? Did he train you? Did he rehearse
you? Did he tell you exactly what to do and what to say? You were a very apt pupil,
too, weren't you? You were a very apt pupil. Why did you pick on me? Why me?...I
was the set-up. I was the set-up, wasn't I? I was a made-to-order witness.
Scottie suddenly realizes that his vertigo is not affecting him and he has made it to
the top. For a moment, he forgets about the questioning and gloats to himself: "I
made it. I made it." Climbing higher into the tower through the trap door to the
actual "scene of the crime" in the belfry, he drags her up as her feet go limp and
unresistant. With powerful intensity, he questions her about the betrayal and she
cowers from him. Using two key words from earlier - freedom and power - he bitterly
explains how he learned of the deception as the story of her collusion and sinister
relationship with Elster is revealed (as a mistress and accomplice in another denial of
her own identity). He chides her for becoming "sentimental" and keeping Carlotta's
necklace. [Judy's game of betrayal and subsequent abandonment by Elster parallel
what happened to Carlotta Valdes]:
Scottie: So this is where it happened. The two of you hid back there and waited for it
to clear, and then you sneaked down and drove into town, is that it? And then, you
were his girl, huh? Well, what happened to ya? What happened to ya? Did he ditch
ya? Oh Judy, with all of his wife's money and all that freedom and that power and he
ditched you. What a shame! But he knew he was safe. He knew you couldn't talk.
Did he give you anything?
Judy: Money.
Scottie: And the necklace, Carlotta's necklace, there was where you made your
mistake, Judy. You shouldn't keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn't have been,
you shouldn't have been that sentimental.
And then, after Scottie's voice has broken, his rage also breaks. As she cringes in a
corner of the tower, he cries out with bitterness and tells her how much he really had
loved her: "I loved you so, Maddy [a combination of Madeleine and Judy]." Judy
anguishes and pleads for forgiveness, explaining how she willingly endangered
herself by getting emotionally involved with him after the murder. With great
sincerity and commitment, she professes that she still loves him even though he was
her victim:
Judy: I was safe when you found me. There was nothing that you could prove. When
I saw you again, I couldn't run away. I loved you so. I walked into danger, let you
change me because I loved you and I wanted you. Oh, Scottie, oh Scottie please. You
love me. Please keep me safe, please...
Scottie: It's too late. It's too late. [These words are an echo of a few of Madeleine's
final words.] There's no bringing her back.
Experiencing intense feelings of both repulsion (hate) and attraction (love), he softens
when she insists that she loves him and falls into his arms for a passionate embrace
and kiss - they renew their twisted love. Then, suddenly the footsteps of a black-clad
figure in the shadows startle Judy. [In Judy's mind, the words "bringing her back" are
fulfilled.] Judy backs away from Scottie gasping: "Oh, no!" The dark, shadowy figure
says: "I hear voices." Terrified, thinking and believing she is seeing the ghost of the
murdered Madeleine (or the reincarnation of the ghostly doomed mother Carlotta

Valdes), Judy recoils, steps and falls backward through an opening in the tower and
plummets to her own death (off-screen) in an emotionally-shattering climax. The
figure, actually a nun from the mission, crosses herself and murmurs the last words
of the film: "God have mercy."
The nun [a Mother Superior or virginal Sister of Mary?] pulls the bell rope and rings
the mission bell. As the bell tolls (signalling not salvation but eternal damnation),
Scottie, cured of his vertigo, emerges from the arched window of the tower onto the
belfry ledge. He stares down in horror at her body far below - stunned, openmouthed, shocked and glassy-eyed with his arms slightly away from his body. He is
cured of his vertigo, but totally destroyed by his other delusions and burgeoning
sorrow. Will he join her in a suicidal leap, or again go mad? Tragically loving and
losing the same woman twice, repeating the pattern he had intended to break, the
scene fades to black.

------ SUPPLEMENTAL ENDING
A supplemental ending to the original film (dubbed the "foreign censorship ending")
provided just punishment for the guilty Elster. Hitchcock was required to shoot an
extended ending to satisfy the needs of the foreign censorship committee. After the
conclusion of the film above, Midge is positioned by the side of her radio intently
listening to a report of the search for Elster in Europe:
Elster was last heard of living in Switzerland but is now thought to be residing
somewhere in the South of France. Captain Hansen states that he anticipates no
trouble in having Elster extradited once he is found.
Another news flash reports locally that in Berkeley, three University of California
sophomores were caught "in an embarrassing position" when discovered by police as
they led a cow up the steps of a campus building. She abruptly turns off the radio
and turns as Scottie enters her apartment and blankly looks at her with his hands in
his pockets. He strides over to the window - darkened by nightfall - as she pours
drinks for both of them. She wordlessly gives one of the glasses to Scottie and then
sits down, while he gazes mindlessly out the window. The scene fades to black.

VERTIGO : Responses
Contemporary response
Vertigo premiered in San Francisco on 9 May 1958. It performed averagely at the box
office, and reviews were mixed. Variety said the film showed Hitchcock's "mastery",
but was too long and slow for "what is basically only a psychological murder
mystery".[11] Similarly, the Los Angeles Times admired the scenery, but found the plot
"too long" and felt it "bogs down" in "a maze of detail"; scholar Dan Aulier says that

this review "sounded the tone that most popular critics would take with the film".[12]
However, the Los Angeles Examiner loved it, admiring the "excitement, action,
romance, glamor and [the] crazy, off-beat love story".
Additional reasons for the mixed response initially were that Hitchcock fans were
not pleased with his departure from the romantic-thriller territory of earlier films
and that the mystery was solved with one-third of the movie left to go.[14]
Vertigo was nominated for Academy Awards in two technical categories: Best Art
Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White or Color (Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead,
Samuel M. Comer, Frank McKelvy) and Best Sound.[15]
Hitchcock and Stewart received the San Sebastián International Film Festival for Best
Director and Best Actor respectively.
In an interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock stated that Vertigo was one of his
favorite films, with some reservations.[16]
Re-evaluation
In the 1950s, the French Cahiers du cinéma critics began re-evaluating Hitchcock as a
serious artist rather than just a populist showman. However, even François
Truffaut's important 1962 book of interviews with Hitchcock mentions Vertigo very
little. Dan Aulier has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigo's rise in adulation
was the British-Canadian scholar Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films (1968), which calls
the film "Hitchcock's masterpiece to date and one of the four or five most profound
and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us".[17] Adding to its mystique was the
fact that Vertigo was one of five films owned by Hitchcock which was removed from
circulation in 1973. When Vertigo was re-released in theaters in October 1983, and
then on home video in October 1984, it achieved an impressive commercial success
and laudatory reviews.[18] Similarly adulatory reviews were written for the October
1996 of a restored print in 70mm and DTS sound at the Castro Theater in San
Francisco.[19]
In 1989, Vertigo was recognized as a "culturally, historically and aesthetically
significant" film by the United States Library of Congress and selected for
preservation in the National Film Registry, going in the first year of the registry's
voting.
The film ranked 4th and 2nd respectively in Sight and Sound's poll of the best films
ever made, in 1992 and 2002 respectively. In 2005, Vertigo came in second (to
Goodfellas) in British magazine Total Film's book, 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.
In his book Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer,
however, British film critic Tom Shone argued that Vertigo's critical re-evaluation has
led to excessive praise, and argued for a more measured response. Faulting Sight and
Sound for "perennially" putting the film on the list of best-ever films, he wrote that
"Hitchcock is a director who delights in getting his plot mechanisms buffed up to a
nice humming shine, and so the Sight and Sound team praise the one film of his in

which this is not the case – it's all loose ends and lopsided angles, its plumbing out
on display for the critic to pick over at his leisure."

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