Week 4: Vertigo

Vertigo was definitely my favorite Hitchcock film so far (well, maybe tied with The 39 Steps). Not only was the entire film an explosive burst of color, but it was over 2 hours long – a truly engaging ordeal. Ironically, I probably came up with fewer notes on it than any of the other films we watched. I didn’t notice any particular scenes in which rhetorical techniques were used to demonstrate subtext relevant to the story – I got the impression that Hitchcock was simply trying to tell a great story, and each scene simply served to move to plot forward and stimulate our emotions simultaneously. What interested me more than anything else was Hitchcock’s symbolic use of color, though I did not start to understand the ins and outs of this symbolism until more than halfway through the movie. Particularly, the court scene after Madeline “kills herself” (around 01:21:45) was my “Eureka” moment. The nuns and almost all the men in this scene are wearing blue, as they discuss Madeline’s supposed suicide, claiming that she was of “unsound mind”. This made me think back to 16:45, wherein Scottie, Gavin, and Madeline are eating in a restaurant and the walls are all painted a vibrant red. This is one of the first instances in which Gavin shows Scottie that Madeline is acting very strange. In addition, during the dream sequence at 01:24:18, Carlotta’s necklace has a red stone in the middle of it, and as Scottie enters his dream, the light in the room flashes blue, and once the dream is in full swing it switches to a flashing red light. These are some of the most prominent examples, but there are many others. This dichotomy of color really enhances the feelings of suspense, uneasiness, and tension while watching Vertigo – even when you don’t know quite what is going on, you can sense something is different. The first time the red restaurant comes up, it takes the eye by surprise – almost the whole screen fills with color, and a very alien color at that (especially when compared to the dark blue of the opening scene). Hitchcock uses blue to represent the logical, physical world we all live in; and uses red to represent the subjective, supernatural world that so much of this film dabbles in. By doing this, he separates each sphere a bit more, and enhances the mystique and supernatural feel of his film.