Vertigo: the climb to the top

In 2012, the once-a-decade poll of world film critics voted Vertigo (1958) the greatest film. It was a noteworthy if only because it had displaced Citizen Kane (1941), which had resided at the top since 1962. Vertigo had cracked the top ten in 1982.

I dont make or care for lists and polls, but this British Film Institute poll appears to be sound. The results sometimes are swayed by a hot film. For example, Michelangelo Antonionis L'avventura, a 1960 groundbreaking film, was ranked second behind Citizen Kane. L'avventura dropped to number six in 1972 and stayed there in 1982, but by 1992, it had dropped from the list.So much for greatness.

I prefer this list over others, like the American Film Institute's top 100 lists, because the relative popularity of the films and their box office is not a factor. Indeed, many of the films in the top ten over the years have been either financial failures, like Jean Renoirs Rules of the Game (1939), or dismissed by the critics and public, like Vertigo. I also like the fact that the critics are accountable for their choices. You can read who they voted for and, in many cases, be appalled by some of their selections.

Vertigo's selection had its critics, so to speak. One tried to show how Vertigo was unworthy of greatest picture status although it was certainly a fine work. That's the problem with having lists of greatest films. Its an impossible situation. The decision to call something the greatest assumes too much. I'm even skeptical about responding to questions about what are my favorite and greatest films. I know better which films most affected me, like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and The Wild Bunch (1969), and care little what's the greatest of them all.

However, since Vertigo has reached heights only two other films have enjoyed -- besides Citizen Kane, there is the 1952 polls number one selection, Bicycle Thieves (1947)-- I want to reflect on the quality of Hitchcock's film.

The first thing that occurs to me is how Vertigo offers a view of Hitchcock's own psyche. We know from his biography (see The Dark Side of Genius by Donald Spoto) that in 1963-1964, when he was making Marnie, Hitchcock was infatuated with his star, Tippi Hedren. He approached and treated her much the same as Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) had with Judy Barton (Kim Novak) in Vertigo. That is, the two men became greatly interested in controlling the smallest details of the respective women's lives, down to their choice of shoes and hair style. Ultimately, Tippi Hedren rebuffed Hitchcock. We know what happened to Judy/Madeleine. Hitchcock skillfully exhibits his egotism and desires through Scottie Ferguson. It isnt so much a confession than a frank, unstilted view of Hitchcock's soul. He is Scottie, and Scottie is the knowledge-seeking, confident American male of the 1950's. He can be caring, dutiful, and sensible; he can also become obsessed and rigidly controlling, on the verge of becoming a. . .psycho!

Watching Vertigo, starting with the explicit spirals in the opening credit sequence to the interpretive spirals generated by the dramatic action, we experience what I would call the 'vertigo effect'. Thus, the meaning of our watching the film becomes copying or emulating the manner by which Scottie enters his emotional crisis.

This crisis starts with his forbidden love for Madeleine Elster, whom hes following for a college friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). The forbidden element is multiple. Besides desiring a married woman, he becomes enamored with the dead Madeleine, and then attempts to transform Judy Barton into the image of the dead woman. He's become helpless, emotionally paralyzed, and only by changing Judy into Madeleine does he imagine he can live and love again.

While Scottie is getting his second chance, the film narrative slides away from him to Judy, effectively revealing to the audience Scottie's damaged psyche. We witness the relative brutality inflicted on Judy, by Scottie and, initially (but in retrospect), by Elster. She's willing, at the hands of Scottie, to be transformed, if this is the way she can have him love her. He's unwilling to accept the real woman, Judy, and wants only to consume the image of Madeleine.

If I had to interpret what the vertigo represents -- what the films title and the spirals point to -- I would focus on the man's fear of female sexuality. However, the film suggests a nexus of vertigoes: alongside Scottie's unconscious and the viewer's potential fears of female sexuality, an interpretive analogue equates these fears with a desire to know and understand the world.

One spiral we are shown is the rings of Redwood tree, which rings designate the historical past. Specifically, we see designated 1066, the Norman conquest of England, and 1776, the Declaration of Independence. When Madeleine sees herself in the ring around 1850 or 1860, the years of Carlotta, the woman who allegedly possesses Madeleine, the implication is that human history becomes complicit in the vertigo effect.

Scottie gets caught up in trying to figure out the mystery of Carlotta's possession of Madeleine, leading him to another spiral, the staircase up the bell tower at the mission. He follows Madeleine nearly to the top, at which point his psychological and physical weakness merge. Madeleine falls from the tower, in apparent suicide, crushing both his love for Madeleine as well as his knowledge of what was happening to her.

The many plots in Vertigo embody separate and converging spirals into which the viewer descends. Like Judy, we might be able to comprehend what is going on. She's being used by Elster in a plot to kill his wife. The unwitting tool in the plot is Scottie, whose desire for knowledge and truth Elster's plot depends strongly. More likely, we take Scottie's viewpoint and become lost in the stories of Carlotta and Madeleine. These stories, with the fatal attachment to Madeleine, lead Scottie to his nightmare (literally) image: an open grave into which he falls.  He suffers a mental breakdown and becomes for several months catatonic.  Likewise, the narrative, and we along with it, are at an impasse. And Scottie's rehabilitation only allows him (and us) to be functional human beings.

Then we spot Judy on the street. She becomes the means for our redemption, Scottie's and our second chance. We may be less deceived than Scottie. We know Judy is Kim Novak and that she played Madeleine. Even when Scottie transforms Judy into Madeleine, he believes he has recreated her. Only when he spots the necklace on Judy's neck, the same necklace worn in the painting of Carlotta (more spirals), does reality hit him. What's Scottie going to  do?  He returns to the scene of his breakdown. The staircase to the bell tower. He's going to take Judy/Madeleine to the top.

He does. And he embraces Judy but calls her Madeleine. He's overcome his physical vertigo but emotionally he has not gotten over the loss of Madeleine, a Madeleine, by the way, who never really existed, was only a part played by Judy (more spirals).

His climbing the tower is a hollow victory. Judy gets scared by a shadowy figure (a nun) in the tower room and falls from the tower. Scottie goes to the edge and looks down. In fear? In amazement? Will he be crushed by squandering his second chance? Will be cured of his desire for Madeleine? Will he be cured of his desire to reach the top?