Scottie as Everyman
In Vertigo, Hitchcock wins sympathy for
Scottie almost immediately as he dangles by his fingernails from
a rooftop high above the street. The camera’s dizzying angle presents
Scottie’s point of view as he hangs helplessly over the abyss. When
the camera cuts to his face, it is powerfully engaging to see Scottie’s
cold sweat and obvious terror. Our sympathy and identification with
the protagonist are key to the film’s powerful impact.
After bonding with Scottie in crisis, we then get a sense
of Scottie’s amiability, sense of humor, and desirability to women
in the scene in Midge’s apartment. The fear of heights that he exhibits
in the same scene is a common phobia with which many viewers can easily
identify. When it leads to Scottie’s downfall, his pain can be felt
all the more keenly.
These opening scenes position Scottie as an Everyman—someone
with attractive character traits and some very human flaws. His career
aspiration to become chief of police, his conflicted feelings about
Midge, and his need to recuperate after a brush with death on the
roof all serve to make him accessible and human. When he tentatively
accepts a detective job from Gavin Elster, we can sympathize with
his desire to feel useful and to immerse himself in his prior life
as detective.
It is critical that we feel sympathy for Scottie by the
time he begins to trail Madeleine because the dreamlike “detective
work” scenes change every-day reality into a world that is harder
to recognize or to compare to the real world. Hitchcock employs
soft-focus camera work and Bernard Herrmann’s swirling music to
create a world that facilitates Scottie’s ever-growing obsession
with Madeleine. By the time Scottie and Madeleine profess their
love for each other, we’ve been assimilated into this dream world
and are as enchanted as Scottie is by Madeleine’s ethereal, haunted
persona and as anxious to help Madeleine escape her “possession.”
When Madeleine hurls herself off the bell tower of San Juan Bautista,
Scottie’s helplessness and anguish are ours as well.
Hitchcock tests our sympathy for Scottie as his obsession
for the dead Madeleine leads him to mold Judy into Madeleine’s image.
But Hitchcock lessens the distastefulness of this monomaniacal behavior
by first showing Scottie at his weakest and most vulnerable. Following
Madeleine’s death, the catatonic Scottie is placed in a sanatorium
and is completely unresponsive to Midge’s aid and care. The doctor
reveals that Scottie suffers from “acute melancholia, together with
a guilt complex.” Hitchcock even makes us privy to Scottie’s nightmares,
which he depicts in a striking mix of cartoon and surreal photography.
The dream culminates with the protagonist falling headlong into
an open grave. By experiencing his dream, the viewer gains a visceral
sense of Scottie’s identification with Madeleine and his subconscious
desire to join her in death. While Scottie’s subsequent obsessiveness
may still be distasteful, Hitchcock has ensured an understanding
of the roots of that behavior. Hitchcock also strengthens the identification
with Scottie’s obsession by filming many key scenes from Scottie’s
perspective. When Judy emerges from her room completely transformed,
the camera turns with Scottie to show what he sees: her figure bathed
in a green light, her outline diffused in a ghostly glow.
By the time Scottie discovers Judy’s secret past as “Madeleine” and
begins his maniacal return to the top of the bell tower, our feelings
are as conflicted as his. We are horrified when he drags Judy up the
stairs and simultaneously root for him to conquer his acrophobia
and reach the top. We share the admixture of repulsion and attraction
Scottie feels toward Judy/Madeleine as she attempts to explain her
role in the death of Elster’s wife. Instead of providing a feeling
of completion or catharsis, however, the final sequence of events
resurrects the state of suspense: Judy has fallen to her death and
Scottie stands in the bell tower, untroubled by acrophobia, but a
shattered man in every other sense.
