Quote 1
Gavin: “Do
you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter
and take possession of a living being?”
Gavin Elster asks Scottie this question
in his attempt to hire Scottie to trail his wife. Elster is referring
to his belief that the long-dead Carlotta Valdes has taken possession
of his wife, Madeleine. For the first two-thirds of the film, both
Scottie and the viewer come to believe that it is indeed possible
for someone dead to take possession of a living being, as Madeleine
glides around San Francisco apparently haunted by Carlotta, even
driven to suicide by her ghost. But Madeleine is not the only one
in the film possessed by a dead person. After Madeleine’s apparent
suicide, Scottie, too, becomes possessed. As he wanders about the
streets of San Francisco after her death, he is continually convinced
that he sees Madeleine in other women. When he meets Judy, he is
certain that he has found her.
Judy also spends much of the film possessed by a dead
person. The Madeleine whom she impersonates comes back to “haunt”
her when Scottie insists that she assume the dead Madeleine’s identity
in both appearance and behavior. Eventually, Judy loses herself
to a kind of possession by the dead woman. As Scottie drags her
up the stairs of the bell tower at the end of the film, Judy answers
sometimes as herself, sometimes as Madeleine, no longer certain
of her true identity. When she sees the shadowy figure of a nun
at the top of the bell tower, she panics and falls, fearing the
apparition may be the dead Madeleine returning to avenge her murder.
