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The Secret Life of Vertigo (1958)

Part Four:  Making the Illusion Real

Major Spoilers!

The coroner at the subsequent inquest into Madeleine’s death is uncompromisingly brutal in his assessment of Scottie’s inadequacies, while attaching no blame at all to Gavin Elster, the architect of the tragedy.   The coroner uses words such as ‘weakness’ ‘fear’ ‘powerless’ to describe Scottie and his actions, and concludes that, ‘having once again allowed someone to die, he could not face the tragic result of his own weakness and ran away.’   Elster offers Scottie some words of sympathy after the summing up – ‘You and I know who killed Madeleine’ – before revealing that he plans to leave the country for good.   The scene ends with a long shot that is positioned to show the room’s ceiling, which gives the impression of an oppressive weight bearing down on Scottie.

Scottie’s tortured state of mind is illustrated by a vivid nightmare that precipitates his mental breakdown. The nightmare begins with an animated image of a posy of flowers similar to those held by Carlotta Valdes in the portrait and the one that Madeleine threw petal by petal into the bay.   The association is one of mental disintegration (at least in Scottie’s mind) as Madeleine shredded the posy immediately prior to her suicide attempt, and Scottie is about to descend into his own nervous breakdown.   The use of animation – an artificial representation of reality – suggests that Scottie might also subconsciously suspect that his idealised perception of Madeleine is deeply flawed.   We next see an incongruous image of Scottie and Elster standing at a window as they had immediately after the inquest into Madeleine’s death, but this time Carlotta Valdes stands between them, suggesting that, in death, her possession of Madeleine is now complete.   We then see Scottie walking towards Carlotta’s open grave and falling into it in a subjective shot that encourages us to identify with his vertiginous state of mind.   Then we see him plunging towards the same roof on which Madeleine died, but it disintegrates before he reaches it and he continues to fall into a white void.   Scottie transcends the physical and enters the metaphysical (death) in his desire to identify with Madeleine and his conflicting fear and desire of death.

 Following his breakdown, Scottie mentally withdraws from the world and is institutionalised.   He receives a visit from Midge, who plays Mozart – which played in her apartment in an earlier scene – in an attempt to ‘sweep the cobwebs away.’   Scottie fails to respond – he is now totally divorced from the superficial realities of the world in which Midge resides, and therefore beyond her reach.   Midge eventually accepts defeat with the quietly heartbreaking admission that ‘I don’t think Mozart’s going to help at all.’   With these words she finally accepts her inadequacies with regard to a relationship with Scottie and, resigning herself to defeat, forlornly walks out of his world.   The scene is Midge’s last in the film, and her final exit is down a corridor, which grows dark around her as she reaches its end.  The scene not only reminds us of Madeleine’s dream in which she walks along a dark corridor towards death, but also of the shot of Scottie’s descent of the bell tower staircase immediately after Madeleine’s death: in each scene both Midge and Scottie have failed to save the person they love…

Some time later, and apparently recovered from his breakdown, Scottie resumes his wandering, haunting like some forlorn ghost the places in San Francisco where Madeleine led him when she was alive.    He drifts aimlessly, and this apparent lack of direction is reflected in the pace of the film, enabling the audience to identify once again with Scottie’s state of mind after being forced to take an objective position while he suffered his sense of melancholia.   On three occasions he thinks he sees Madeleine only to realise he is mistaken, an early indication that he is willing Madeleine to be alive and futilely searching in the real world for what we know is an illusion.

Then one day, as he gazes at a display of flowers in the window of a florist, he sees a girl (Kim Novak) in a green sweater who, although dressed cheaply and possessing coarse manners, bears an uncanny resemblance to Madeleine.   Her resemblance could be passed off as superficial - her hair is brown, her make-up heavily-applied, and her accent lacks Madeleine’s cultured tones - but Scottie sees something more.   The flowers he was contemplating immediately prior to spotting this girl are posies identical to the ones Madeleine carried, and which we saw disintegrating in Scottie’s nightmare.

Scottie follows the girl to her cheap hotel, where he spies her at a window in much the same way he saw Madeleine at the McKittrick Hotel.   He follows her into the hotel and finds her room midway down a corridor.   He knocks on the door, and she greets him with distrust.   When he says he just wants to speak to her she moodily exclaims that she’s heard that line before: ‘I remind you of someone you were madly in love with, but then she ditched you for another guy and you’ve been carrying a torch ever since.’   At this point we - and Scottie - are unaware of the pivotal role Judy played in Gavin Elster’s plot, but with hindsight we can see it’s likely that it is Elster she is thinking of when she speaks these words.   She is once again playing a role, pretending to be unaware of Scottie’s story, of what has driven him to her door, and trying to deny her true feelings towards him.   Scottie insists he just wants to know who she is, and Judy briefly describes herself as a shop girl from Salinas, Kansas.   She stands in front of a mirror - an untrue reflection of reality - as she tells him of her past.   As Scottie prepares to leave he asks her to join him for dinner - an invitation which she reluctantly accepts.

For one of the few times in the film, the camera leaves Scottie in order to remain with Judy so that the film’s twist can be revealed.    Judy sits at a small desk to write a letter to Scottie confessing that she played the role of Madeleine at Elster’s bidding in order to trick Scottie into testifying that the real Madeleine - whom Elster threw from the bell tower at the San Juan Bautista mission when Scottie was paralysed by vertigo - had suicidal tendencies.   This revelation has often been criticised for coming two-thirds of the way through the film instead of at its climax, but its timing serves a number of purposes.   Firstly, it distances us from Scottie by revealing facts of which he is unaware.   Up to this point we have known only as much as he has and have effectively been watching events unfold with him, but from now on we watch him react to things of which we are already aware.    The revelation also allows us access to Judy and her emotions as she is virtually forced to once again transform herself into the image of Madeleine.   Our reaction to this enforced transformation is therefore entirely different to what it would have been had we been unaware of her secret past; we know that she loves Scottie deeply, and is tortured by his love for Madeleine, which makes her plight all the more poignant, therefore evoking conflicting emotions within us because we know she is complicit in the murder of the real Madeleine Elster.   Thirdly it reinforces the sense of illusion intruding on reality.   The meaning of Madeleine’s troubled behaviour in the redwood forest and at the mission immediately before her death suddenly becomes ambiguous.   Was the way she behaved simply Judy playing the part of Madeleine, or was she expressing her real emotions - fear, anxiety, anguish - through Madeleine?

As she writes the letter, the camera slowly circles her so that the lamp on the desk at which she writes fills much of the screen and conceals her entirely at one point.   The image calls to mind the scene at Scottie’s apartment in which Madeleine leans forward into the light of his table lamp and describes her fear of the darkness as she tells him about her dream, thus linking Judy‘s helplessness with Madeleine‘s fear.   Having finished writing the letter, Judy tears it up then goes to the wardrobe in which Madeleine’s grey suit hangs.   She pushes it into the darkness at the rear of the cupboard as if trying to push back the identity of Madeleine which has become a part of her and which she perhaps realises threatens to engulf her now that Scottie is back in her life.

Scottie takes Judy to Ernie’s, the restaurant in which he first saw Madeleine.   Now that we are able to identify with both characters and understand the thoughts and motivations behind their actions, the artificial nature of their relationship is forcefully illustrated.   It is reinforced when Scottie sees a woman who bears a strong resemblance to Madeleine from a distance and practically forgets Judy is there as he gazes intently at the woman.   At this early stage in our relationship we are made to see that Judy has no more chance of reaching Scottie than Midge had at the hospital when he was in the midst of his breakdown.

Judy is so hopelessly in love with Scottie that she is unable to refuse his request to see her again, even though she knows he is not interested in her as an individual.   We see her in darkness as she speaks, her profile surrounded by the glow from the green neon sign of the hotel, and it is Madeleine’s profile.   The next day Scottie takes her to some of the places where he trailed Madeleine.   As they stroll side by side alongside the pillars of the Portals of the Past in the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts, Judy glances at a kissing couple.   Later, Scottie buys her a flower from a street seller but ignores her choice to select one of his own - a foreshadowing of the increasingly obsessive control he will exercise over her, and which is illustrated in the following scene when he buys clothes for her at Ransohoffs.

Scottie is very particular about the clothes he wants to buy for Judy - they must be identical to those worn by Madeleine.   Judy tries to resist, either because she knows Scottie is trying to make her over in Madeleine’s image and is frightened that he will learn the truth or because she is frightened of losing her own identity to that of Madeleine’s.   But Scottie’s obsession, and his determination to mould Judy into Madeleine’s image overwhelms her and she meekly agrees to his demands despite her misgivings.

Back at Scottie’s apartment, Judy despairingly beseeches Scottie to love him for herself and not because of her likeness to Madeleine.   But Scottie is by now incapable of giving up his obsessive quest for the illusion of a woman we know never even existed, and Judy is equally incapable of letting him go.   When his attention turns to her hair colour she puts up only a token resistance, quickly acquiescing when Scottie promises he will love her if she changes her colour to the same shade of blonde as Madeleine’s.   After she has agreed, Scottie leads her to the fire and sits her before it where Madeleine sat after he saved her from the bay.   Scottie sits on the sofa, looking down on her from a dominant position.

As Judy has her hair dyed at a beauty salon, Scottie waits impatiently in her hotel room.   He stands at the open door to her room, and we see Judy emerge from the far end of the corridor - a reversal of the earlier image described by Madeleine in which her death is metaphorically compared to walking down a corridor into darkness (death).   Here, Judy - her transformation into Madeleine now almost complete, emerges from the far end of the corridor, thereby resurrecting Madeleine, turning the illusion into reality.   However, Judy’s transformation isn’t entirely complete: her hair is not pinned up in the same style as Madeleine’s, and Scottie insists that she put it right.

Judy goes into her bathroom to adjust her hair, and the camera remains with Scottie as he nervously awaits her return.   His face betrays a mixture of emotions: anxiety, fear, anticipation.   Judy finally emerges from the bathroom and, momentarily, she appears ghostly, transparent, in the eerie green glow from the Empire Hotel sign.   Now the transformation is complete: Judy is gone, and Madeleine has returned.   All her mannerisms have also returned, the way she holds herself, her walk, her sensuous expression.   She walks towards Scottie and, as they kiss the music swells and the camera performs a complete 360’ revolution around them.   For a brief moment the hotel room is magically replaced by the livery stable in which Scottie and Madeleine kissed, indicating that illusion and reality have finally and completely merged.

 In the next scene Scottie waits for Judy/Madeleine to dress for dinner.   Judy has allowed herself to become completely immersed in the character of Madeleine (‘I’ve got my face on,’ she says when discouraging Scottie from kissing her) and wants to go to Ernie‘s to eat, a place she knows has significance for Scottie with regards to Madeleine.   So totally has she become Madeleine that she doesn’t even realise the necklace - which once belonged to Carlotta - that she asks Scottie to fix around her neck will betray her secret.   It is only when Scottie sees the necklace in the mirror - it’s briefly juxtaposed with the same necklace in Carlotta’s portrait in order for the audience - who, of course, already know Judy’s secret - to at least understand the sudden, shocking jolt of realisation experienced by Scottie.   Hitchcock also has the camera pull back from Carlotta’s image to take in Madeleine sat before the portrait in her trance-like state.   The effect is to create a sense of Scottie recoiling from the illusory condition into which he had sunk in direct opposition to the earlier forward tracking shots which illustrated his being lured into the plot that triggered his obsession.

Finally understanding that he has been the victim of an elaborate scam, Scottie suggests they drive out of town instead of going to Ernie’s.   Judy/Madeleine, still unaware of the blunder that has exposed her part in Scottie’s betrayal, readily agrees, but as their car journey takes them closer to the San Juan Bautista mission she becomes increasingly nervous.   When she musters the nerve to ask Scottie where they are going, he simply replies, ‘One final thing I have to do, and then I'll be free of the past.’

By the time they pull up outside the mission Judy is visibly shaken and frightened, but her fear only seems to antagonise Scottie.   He pulls her from the car, telling her he ‘needs her to be Madeleine for a while,’ and drags her into the bell tower.   Judy struggles in vain, and Scottie begins dragging her up the stairs.   As they climb the narrow, winding staircase Scottie brutally wrings a confession from Judy, the final pieces of the puzzle falling into place as they get nearer to the trapdoor through which Madeleine disappeared.   As they finally reach the top of the stairs, Scottie suddenly realises he has beaten his vertigo.   It wasn’t incrementally attaining greater heights or a sudden mental shock that cured him, but learning the truth.   The vertigo of the title, therefore, isn’t simply a description of Scottie’s physical reaction to heights but a more symbolic reference to his psychological condition.

Finally conquering his phobia of heights isn’t enough to temper his anguish and distress at losing his chance of escaping into fantasy.   ‘I loved you so, Maddy,’ he cries, unconsciously combining the two women’s names in much the same way that Judy seems confused about who she is, apparently switching from one personality to the other as if both women lived within her.

Scottie’s rage finally breaks in the face of Judy/Madeleine’s abject despair.   She beseeches him to keep her safe after telling him she loves him so, and embraces him.   As they kiss, a shadow emerges from the darkness, startling Judy, who falls from the bell tower.   The reason for her fall is never explained in the film; perhaps she feared the figure was Madeleine, rising from the dead to claim her in the same way that Carlotta was supposed to have possessed Madeleine.

 The final shot of the film shows Scottie standing on the perilous verge at the top of the bell tower, staring down at Judy’s crushed figure.   It is an image that is filled with irony.   Ostensibly, Judy has suffered an identical fate to Madeleine the woman whose identity she assumed (although Elster’s wife’s neck was broken before she was thrown from the tower),   Scottie is cured of his illness - but the price of his cure is the destruction of the reality of Judy and the illusion of Madeleine.

[Part One]     [Part Two]     [Part Three]    

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