Vertigo
In a relatively early wordless scene from Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), private eye Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) follows his college friend’s wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) on her mysterious wanderings.
After watching Vertigo, consider the questions below.
1. Explain in as much detail as possible how the framing shapes the meaning of such (early) sequence(s). What does it say about Scottie’s point of view and Madeleine’s position as object of that point of view?
2. Towards the conclusion of the sequence described below, the image contains a remarkable “double image.” Why is this shot so disconcerting and complicated?
Framing, Camera Angles, and Special Effects
Framing
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is perhaps one of the most complex and disturbing movies ever made. While the story at first appears to be a well-worn tale of lost love and tragic obsession, it becomes a rich and layered film about seeing on every level, supported by its intricate drama of images and cinematography. Ex-detective Scottie Ferguson has just recovered from a trauma and taken a job as a private eye. His former friend, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to
follow his wife, Madeleine. VistaVision, the aspect ratio used in Vertigo, is one of the film's immediately recognizable and significant formal features. The open space of the widescreen frame enhances Scottie's anxious searches through the wide vistas of San Francisco. In the film's early sequences, the cinematography reinforces Scottie's pursuit of Madeleine through point-of-view shots and
framing masks. Hitchcock cleverly creates masking effects by using natural objects within the frame, unlike the artificially obvious masks used in some older films. Here the frame of the car windshield masks and intensifies Scottie's perspective as he follows Madeleine. And in another scene Scottie follows Madeleine to a flower shop. The masking effects here isolate and dramatize Scottie's intense gazing, emphasizing his point of view. The brilliance
of the framing creates one of the most powerful and revealing images of the film. We see both Scottie peering at Madeleine and Madeleine's reflection in the mirror. In this double image, Scottie's looking literally contains Madeleine as an image. Madeleine frequently evades Scottie's point of view, disappearing like a ghost beyond the frame's borders, which is part of what entices Scottie and draws him to her. The shock of Madeleine's fall to her death from
the top of the church tower at the end of the first half of the film is especially disturbing because it occurs offscreen and is revealed only as Scottie watches her blurred body flash by the tower window. The window acts as a frame, limiting Scottie's perception of what has actually happened.
Distance and Angles
Given that the crisis of Vertigo is in one sense about far distances seen from high angles, camera distance and angles play a major role in the film. Throughout the
film, Scottie is locked in the frame of his own perspective and desires. As Scottie follows Madeleine from a distance in the first part of the film, his desire to know the mysteries she conceals and his longing for her create a continual drama of looking. Like many other Hitchcock films, Vertigo continuously exploits the edges of the frame to tease and mislead us with what we and Scottie cannot see. At a dramatic turning point in the film, Scottie watches
Madeleine in a long shot, distanced and mysterious under the Golden Gate Bridge. As she dives into the bay, Scottie quickly crosses that distance to save her. Seeing Madeleine's face as a close-up after he rescues her is an image that will haunt him throughout the film. Hitchcock uses frequent close-ups and even extreme close-ups to concentrate on significant
details of Madeleine's image. He shifts constantly between Madeleine's face and the fetishized extensions of her face, her hair, the necklace, and the flowers, emphasizing and reinforcing Scottie's obsessive fascination with Madeleine. Another key feature of the cinematography that reinforces the drama of Vertigo is the use of camera angles. In some cases, the film's sharp angles enhance Scottie's complex psychological
and moral concerns about power and control. In the scene when Gavin persuades Scottie to follow Madeleine, framing and camera angles say much more than the words of the two men. The conversation begins normally enough, with Scottie looking offscreen at Gavin. Shortly after, Gavin appears through a low-angle shot to be positioned significantly higher up than Scottie. The visual conflicts and tensions of
this shot become further emphasized when Gavin moves into the foreground to continue the conversation, now visually dominating the seated Scottie. Toward the end of the sequence, Scottie sits literally cornered by the framing and camera angle. Although neither we nor Scottie know it yet, he is already being positioned and manipulated through the frames and angles that depict him.
Zooms and Tracks
In Vertigo, the cinematography foregrounds the movement of the frame as a way to reflect the swirling movement of Scottie's psyche. One of the best examples of this takes place when Scottie finds Madeleine standing before a portrait of her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdez, in an art museum. Inside the museum the camera executes several complex moves that mimic Scottie's perspective. The camera simultaneously zooms in and tracks on the swirl in Madeleine's hair and then reframes by tracking and
zooming in on the same hairstyle in the painting of Carlotta. These camera movements in the museum sequence resemble those used in the thrilling opening sequence. Scottie is hanging from the gutter and suddenly paralyzed with vertigo. This is captured in a celebrated combination of a tracking movement forward and a backward zoom. Visually this combination of seemingly contradictory movements produces two effects. First, a flattening of the image as the zoom effaces the depth of the track. And second, an odd spirally action as the distant ground is drawn up
through the advancing track. The various spiraling effects in Vertigo continually remind us of the connection between Scottie's trauma and his relentless desire for Madeleine. The spinning vortex becomes emblematic of Scottie's vertigo. In fact, his vertigo and the film's themes of seeing death and abstraction, are hinted at from the very beginning, in the famous opening credits designed by Saul Bass.
Special Effects and Animation
Although Vertigo is to a certain extent a realistic thriller, it employs animation and special effects as a prominent way of representing Scottie's psychological state. One of the strangest uses of special effects is Scottie's nightmarish hallucinations, which occur after Madeleine's death and his subsequent breakdown because of his guilt over having caused a second death. Triggered by his psychotic depression, this
eruption of animation depicts the scattering of the mythical Carlotta's bouquet of flowers and a black abstract form of Scottie's body falling onto the roof of the church. Another powerful example of special-effects animation occurs when Scottie begins to lose his grip on one reality and become engulfed in another. As Scottie kisses Judy, the woman Gavin Elster hired to impersonate his wife, they spin free of the background of the room and become literally
engulfed in each other, like a kind of exotic dream. Of course, this dream won't survive these special effects or Scottie's realization that Judy as Madeleine had been part of an elaborate scheme. At the end of the film, Scottie and Judy return to the church and tower to confront his vertigo. Judy is startled by a nun emerging from a trapdoor and steps backward, falling out the tower window to her death.
An eerie matte shot superimposes a tower on the actual church at San Juan Bautista, perhaps to add a crucial element to the setting where Scottie's fear of heights is exploited. And as if to enhance the nightmarish significance of the tower, in the last shot the matted image of the tower appears to glow ominously as it looms over yet another dead body.