How do I describe Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo? The genre is… psychological thriller? It’s considered one of Hitchcock’s best films? But unlike the straightforward spy action movie North By Northwest, it’s kind of hard to describe what this story is about without spoiling the plot. A retired cop who suffers from vertigo is hired to follow a wealthy tycoon’s wife, there’s lots of symbolism with the color green, there’s a theme of obsession, there are plot twists, there’s even some deranged animation thrown in. It’s based on the 1954 French novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac.
I like this 60th anniversary trailer for showing what the plot is basically about without giving away major spoilers:
Saul Bass designed the iconic movie poster and opening title sequence with the imagery of eyes and spirals, which superficially match up with the protagonist inflicted with the vertigo spinning sensation — but of course there’s more. The spirals also resemble the ouroboros — a snake eating its own tail — or maybe the yin and yang, although I’m not sure how familiar western audiences and creators were familiar with this concept at the time.
The story begins
James Stewart stars as John “Scottie” Ferguson, whose career as a San Francisco police detective ended when he found himself hanging from a ledge, and another cop fell and died trying to save him. Scottie retires, carrying survivor’s guilt along with vertigo and fear of heights. He is not quite retirement age, but as a “man of independent means,” he is fine never working again — not even at a safe desk job.
Scottie hangs out with his old college friend and ex-fiancée Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), an artist in fashion design. Their engagement had lasted only three weeks and Midge was the one to call it off, but there has been no one else for her and she half-jokes about wanting him back. They have a good platonic relationship but Midge looks a little hurt when Scottie teases her that she should be less “motherly.” Totally friend-zoned. Sensible and rational, Midge wants to help Scottie with his vertigo, but nothing seems to work as he gets triggered just by climbing up a chair.
One of Scottie and Midge’s old college acquaintances, Gavin Elster (Tom Elmore) has resurfaced and wants Scottie’s help. Gavin is rich now, having married into the shipbuilding business, but he finds it dull and he feels stuck looking after his wife’s interests now that her family has died. Gavin, who had read about Scottie’s disability in the paper, says his wife Madeleine seems possessed by a dead person. Scottie is uninterested at first, but then he is captivated by Gavin’s stories of her strange behavior — like a medieval knight captivated by a lady just upon hearing her described.
Gavin tells Scottie where he and Madeleine will be eating out, and when Scottie shows up covertly to see them together, he notices the stunning lady (Kim Novak) standing out in a bright green and black dress while everyone else is drab. Romantic music plays, and Scottie is instantly taken with her.
There’s a long sequence of Scottie tailing Madeleine (even her car is striking green!) through her daily routine. She enters a flower shop from an alley and gets an elaborate bouquet. Then she goes to the mission cemetery and visits the grave of Carlotta Valdes (Dec. 3, 1831 – Mar. 5, 1857). Afterward, at an art museum, she sits in front of a picture of Carlotta that has the same flowers and same hair swirl. Later, when Madeleine goes to a hotel, Scottie poses as a working cop and learns she has been renting under the name of “Carlotta Valdes.” He hasn’t even met her, but he feels like he knows her.
Scottie goes to hang out with Midge, who offers to help him in his research and take him to a bookstore to discover the backstory of the historic lady who died tragically young and seems to be possessing Madeleine. Poor Midge, about to realize she is at the boring end of this love triangle.
If you’ve ever seen the “Hot Crazy Matrix” meme, Midge is stuck in the “Fun Zone” (the female equivalent of a genuinely nice guy in the friend zone). Midge is decently good looking, smart, sensible, reasonable, and fun… Scottie just doesn’t see her romantically. He has his eyes on Madeleine, a married woman he has yet to meet but who is strikingly hot and gives every indication of being not quite right in the head. She is the “Danger Zone,” high on the “Hot” scale and possibly even higher on the “Crazy” scale — and if anything, it is exactly this troubled aspect of her that draws Scottie in.
So what is the backstory of Carlotta Valdes, and how much does it actually matter?
First circle of spoilers — whirlwind romance
Once upon a time in 19th Century California, Carlotta Valdes was a young mistress to a rich man whose wife had no children. So when Carlotta herself bore a child, the rich man dumped her but kept custody of the child. “You know, a man could do that in those days. They had the power and the freedom,” says the bookstore owner. This echoes back to some earlier dialogue from Gavin Elster, waxing poetic about old San Francisco.
(It’s funny because people in the “trad” scene talk about the 1950s as the time they want to “retvrn” to while rejecting modernity… but in the actual 1950s, people then thought of themselves as already living peak modernity, and perhaps straying from a more robust golden age.)
Devastated at having her child taken from her, Carlotta Valdes committed suicide. Madeleine, who is now the same age as Carlotta at her death, is Carlotta’s great-granddaughter and the love child’s granddaughter — but apparently has been kept in the dark about the details of her own family history. Madeleine has inherited several pieces of jewelry from Carlotta, which she now wears, but before the apparent possession she had found them too old-fashioned.
Scottie follows Madeleine again, in time to see her throwing herself into the bay as if to repeat history. It is at least a third of the way through the movie now, and Scottie finally meets the object of his infatuation for the first time when he jumps after and rescues her. In that scene, she is wearing black with a little bit of white and he is wearing white with a little bit of black — again, I’m not sure whether there was a purposeful reference to yin and yang imagery but I believe it fits with the themes.
At first, Madeleine is appropriately grateful to be rescued, although probably not creeped out enough that this stranger brought her into his private home rather than a hospital like a normal person would. But the polite exchanges escalate to whirlwind romance as they decide to spend a day together. Madeleine wears white with a black scarf, while Scottie is in a dark suit with a little white polo showing underneath — more possible yin and yang references. Distressed, Madeleine tries to explain how possession feels and her strange dreams and her fears, Scottie reassures her that he won’t let her go, and they kiss with crashing waves in the background and Bernard Herrmann’s dramatic score.
Later, after Scottie is too dense or deliberately ignoring Midge’s hints, she finally makes a more obvious move. Too obvious. Paints a replica of the Carlotta painting, but with her own face instead of Carlotta. Scottie doesn’t react well, and Midge feels ashamed. But the awkward attempt at a love confession was no turn-off — it’s obvious Midge never had a chance as soon as Madeleine was in the picture. Midge may be an artist, but in Scottie’s eyes, only Madeleine can be art itself.
Second circle of spoilers — escalation
Madeleine confides to Scottie about a dream, and they drive to the historic mission the dream is connected to. They confess their mutual love — even though it is only their second day together and they met for the first time very recently. Distressed and troubled, Madeleine insists on going into the church building alone… but then Scottie notices the height of the bell tower and realizes in horror what is going on. This time, though, his rescue attempt fails — he is famously disoriented trying to climb up the spiraling stairs, and too late to rescue Gavin’s wife falling to her death.
Killing off a major character when there’s lots of movie left to go is kind of Alfred Hitchcock’s thing. And in Scott and Madeleine’s sweeping romance, they were only actually together for about a third, or maybe just a fourth of the film’s runtime.
Scottie is devastated at the loss of Madeleine and falls nearly catatonic. It doesn’t help that the inquest, while exonerating him legally, shames him for his “lack of initiative” and “weakness” for having allowed someone to die for the second time. Scottie has to go to a mental hospital for his “acute melancholia” and “guilt complex.” Midge visits and tries to lift his spirits, but ducks out of the story when she realizes that what she has to offer “isn’t going to help at all.” Neither do magnanimous assurances from the newly widowed Gavin, who also ducks out of the story as he is planning to move to Europe.
(As an aside, that 1950s mental hospital also… looked pretty normal and decent and well-run? I wish enough good in-patient and residential places like this were still around for people who need them. Not every old mental hospital was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.)
I love this nightmare sequence combining live action effects with traditional animation:
Even when Scottie checks out of the mental hospital, he is haunted by the memories of Madeleine and even follows a young woman who looks like her. Judy Barton is just a normal Kansas girl trying to make it in San Francisco, a very different personality from Madeleine. Creeped out by Scottie at first — because our movie hero is starting to turn into a pile of red flags — Judy warms up to him and accepts a dinner date…
Third circle of spoilers — the big twist
After accepting Scottie’s dinner date, Judy turns toward the camera, looking disturbed. Was this a good idea?
Then Judy sits down to write a letter to Scottie, which she ultimately chooses not to send, and a flashback turns the entire story on its head. Up until now, you’d think this movie was all about the male gaze seeing what it wants to see, and that there’s nothing else going on.
If you skip the flashback, you would think the ensuing scenes are about a toxic boyfriend with his toxic project, trying to push his low self-esteem girlfriend into becoming someone she isn’t. Judy is well aware that Scottie only likes her for her resemblance to Madeleine, but she just takes his controlling behavior and accepts the unwanted makeover to resemble his lost love. And Scottie is well aware that he is chasing an illusion, yet he doesn’t care — he really wants the illusion.
But the flashback reveals that Judy, in fact, really was the woman Scottie believed to be “Madeleine.” Judy had been Gavin’s mistress, and conspired with him to make herself over as the fake Madeleine — we only saw the real Madeleine when Gavin threw her dead body down the bell tower. Gavin elaborately framed his wife’s murder as a suicide, with the embellished Carlotta story to make Judy’s behavior as Madeleine sound plausible. Gavin had also chosen Scottie as the mark due to his fear of heights, and figuring ahead of time that Scottie would not make it up the stairs in time to see the switch. As Judy was seducing Scottie in disguise, she fell for him for real — and now hopes to continue living this lie without his knowledge.
But as Judy gets her second Madeleine makeover, she makes a rookie mistake — she casually puts on the Carlotta jewelry, perhaps forgetting it was not part of the second makeover. But Scottie’s detective mind catches this — a random young woman on the street, who happened to look like Madeleine, would not have access to the Carlotta jewelry unless she had been conspiring with Gavin the whole time.
Scottie brings Judy to the same bell tower, psychologically able to reach the top of the stairs this time. He reveals knowing what’s up — that Judy has been keeping souvenirs from a killing. And that the part-real, part-fake Carlotta history was repeating itself: “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.”
Startled by an approaching nun, Judy then falls to her own death.
Normally in these types of stories, you would find out the femme fatale’s real motive only when the detective protagonist does, at the very end. But in revealing the plot twist earlier, you get to see the ouroboros in action. Who is really controlling who? Who is really leading this dance? Scottie was playing the part of an emotionally abusive boyfriend to Judy, but Judy’s complicity with Gavin and holding back the truth from Scottie — allowing him to live with false guilt — was of course toxic in and of itself. In the end, they were both playing off each other’s worst traits — both of them desired to live in falsehood.
“Madeleine” always seemed to be a passive character — things just happened to her — but she knew what she was doing the whole time. And Scottie, who seemed to be actively driving the events of the plot, was in fact being driven by Gavin and Judy’s manipulations. Yin always has a little bit of yang, and yang always has a little bit of yin, and they both circle around each other. Similarly, Gavin’s villainy is obvious in hindsight, with his active desire for power and control and the freedom to discard other humans at will; meanwhile, Judy is a villain in her own right with her self-effacing complicity and desire for approval to the extent of cooperating in murder.
Why did Scottie fall for the fake “Madeleine” so hard to begin with? How did the psychopathic Gavin know exactly how to manipulate him with the exact type of illusion that a retired detective would fall for? Scottie was not particularly desperate, as he had other options (Midge). It could be any number of things — Madeleine was beautiful, Madeleine was danger, Madeleine was rich, Madeleine was married and had the “forbidden fruit” appeal. Maybe it was all of these things. You could also speculate that Midge intimidated Scottie with her independence, while Madeleine had that damsel in distress appeal. That would be simplistic, but getting closer…
…Personally, I think the illusion “Madeleine” brought back meaning to Scottie’s life that he had lost when the vertigo forced him to quit work. On paper, Scottie could have had a nice life as an independently wealthy, early retiree but that wasn’t what he truly needed. As a police detective, Scottie had been a solver a mysteries and a protector, and that is the type of character he becomes once again when he gets swept into the fake story that Judy was playing.
That illusion was never meant to last — as Scottie, by Gavin’s own design, found himself once again in the position of being pitied, blamed, and labeled as a weak man who lets others die.
It is only when Scottie rejects the illusion and accepts reality that he is able to recover from his vertigo. Will he perhaps return to the life he was meant to live? Or will he always be stuck in a spiral of guilt and grief now? The unconventional, open-ended ending is just one more aspect of what makes Vertigo a classic.
>hard to describe
>based on the French novel
Aha!