Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
Death as Both Attractive and Frightening
In the opening scene of Vertigo, Scottie
is moments away from death as he dangles from the roof of a tall
building. His fear is palpable, and while he is overcome with terror
watching his comrade fall, letting go seems to be the only way out
of the situation. Madeleine is the embodiment of this fear of and
attraction to death. Supposedly possessed by a woman who took her
own life, Madeleine wanders San Francisco, drawn to the idea of
suicide and yet fearing death. One day after attempting to drown
herself in the San Francisco Bay, she and Scottie wander among the
ancient Sequoia trees and she expresses a dread of death. “I don’t
like it, knowing I have to die,” she tells him, and she pleads with
him to take her into the light.
This confusion of impulses manifests itself on a more
figurative level when Scottie attempts to mold Judy in Madeleine’s
image. While Judy initially fights the annihilation of her real
self—a kind of death—she eventually embraces it as a way to claim
Scottie’s love, saying, “I don’t care anymore about me.” Scottie
enacts these contradictory impulses when he drags Judy to the top
of the bell tower with the apparent desire to kill her, and then
reacts with horror and despair when she plummets to her death.
The Impenetrable Nature of Appearances
The mask-like qualities of appearance are suggested during
the opening credits of the film, which feature a woman’s expressionless face
and a shot first of her lips and then of her nervously darting eyes.
The depths of emotion and experience in this woman are unknowable
to us. In the scene in Midge’s apartment, Scottie appears to be
a balanced man on the mend from a traumatizing experience, but it
does not take long to realize that his healthy exterior masks a
burgeoning madness. And while Midge is pragmatic, unromantic, and
controlled in her responses, her exterior hides the soul of a passionate
person. After her failed attempt to break into Scottie’s dream-world
by painting her own head on Carlotta’s portrait, she flies into
a surprising rage, flinging paintbrushes at her own reflection in
the window—an attempt to shatter the mask that Scottie sees and
mistakes for her whole identity.
Madeleine’s character is nothing but appearance. She
is a fabrication loosely based on the legend of a dead woman, and
Scottie’s attempt to understand and penetrate that appearance is
what leads to his downfall and the downfall of Judy/Madeleine. After
assuming Madeleine’s appearance at Scottie’s insistence, Judy has
difficulty penetrating her own mask. By the time Scottie drags her
up the steps of the bell tower, she no longer has a firm grasp on
her true identity and alternates between speaking as Judy and as
Madeleine.
The Folly of Romantic Delusion
While Scottie’s acrophobia is his most apparent Achilles’
heel, his true tragic flaw is his penchant for romantic delusion.
He fools himself, and is easily fooled by others, into believing
in illusions that are romantically gratifying to him. Hitchcock
presents Midge as a highly sympathetic character and prompts viewers
to root for her in her vain attempts to woo Scottie. Midge is the
antithesis of romantic delusion, firmly grounded in the real world
and able to offer Scottie a mature kind of love. But this is the
kind of love that Scottie rejects in favor of the illusive, dreamlike
love he finds with Madeleine. And it is his decisive submission
to delusion that ensures the film’s tragic ending. Judy pleads with
Scottie to accept her as she is, to try to move beyond the dead
Madeleine, but this is something he cannot do. Judy’s startled fall
from the bell tower is the film’s final example of the folly and
danger of romantic delusion. When the shadowy figure of a nun appears
behind Judy and Scottie in the tower, Judy seems to be overtaken
by the romantic notion that it may be the ghost of the real Madeleine
returning to the scene of the crime.
