Hitchcock in his film Vertigo (1958) sculpts a multifaceted poetic representation of the deceptive and obsessive nature of romance, by carefully layering narrative, cinematography, mise-en-scène, performance and music. Every element is chosen meticulously to amplify that luring sensation of falling in love, and he is using the most seductive device in the world of arts: cinema. Tracking cameras that follow elaborately directed performances unfold on screen like perfectly synchronized choreographies. A detective, a mystery, fragile beauty, dreams, traumas and death, combined with car chases, poetic symbolisms and spellbinding illusions, they all assist Vertigo’s alluring narrative.      

The car chases in Vertigo serve as the skeleton for Hitchcock to build his idea of deceit and manipulation. Scottie is following Madeline with the shots interchanging from Scottie’s close-up to his POV, as the cars glide through the streets of San Francisco. The glacier-like editing tempo veiled by Bernard Hermann’s music emphasizes the anticipation. Hitchcock’s masterful Kuleshov effect and use of POV in this scene succeeds in forming allegiance with the spectator, and demonstrates the power of the artistry of cinema, by negating its subjectivity with his use of subjective camera, as Truffaut admits (Orpen, 2003: 25). The close-ups of Scottie’s stimulated curiosity and surprise throughout the scene express that gradual submission to a newly formed love affair. But this affair is devised by Hitchcock to be a love-triangle, one that involves Scottie, Madeline, and the spectator, who, whether is watching this scene for the first time or not, is being “deceived, by a consummate manipulator, complaisant victim of what has all along been – like all cinema – an illusory construction” (Barr, 1992: 11).

As Madeline drives her car to a narrow dark alley, Scottie gets suspicious, and the third lover submissively does too. And then Hitchcock’s game with appearances and disappearances takes over, with a dreamy transition from the dark alley to a shopping centre that resembles the garden of Eden, and Hermann’s violins signal the passage from suspicion to admiration and relief; Hitchcock knows exactly how much to offer and how much to withdraw to maintain this intriguing sensation.

Next stop for Madeline is at the Mission San Juan Bautista, with Stottie following her through the church to the cemetery yard; a symbolic path of sin and infidelity, or even religion’s deceitful promise to a life after death. The long shots and blurred figure of Madeline by the abundance of light construct a mirage, and Madeline is floating like a ghost; or maybe a saint? Does Madeline really exist? Or from Hitchcock’s perspective, does romance really exist? The alternating use of give-and-take in the chase scenes creates a series of constructive and destructive interferences of subjective realities, which leave one endlessly suspended, and “calls into question the reality of appearances, and by doing so undermines the romance narrative by exposing its fictiveness, its illusory quality” (Allen, 1999: 71).

The idea of romance as a ghost, illusion or mirage is repeated towards the end of the film, when Scottie already knows that Madeline has been Judy all along, and begs her to change her appearance back to how she was when she was Madeline. Scottie’s emotional absence during their meetings and persistence on changing Judy’s look, culminates when he desperately begs her to fix that final detail in her hair. Judy, a victim of romance’s game of guilt, succumbs to his pleading, and when she exits the bathroom her figure is veiled by a halo. Scottie re-enters his phantasy romance, as the camera performs a 360° track, dissolving and transporting him to his last kiss with Madeline at the stables, denoting that the only kind of romance that really exists is the one in our imagination.      

Filmography

Hitchcock, Alfred, Vertigo, 1958, Film. USA: Paramount Pictures

Bibliography

Allen, R. (1999) ‘Hitchcock, or the Pleasures of Metaskepticism’, October, 89, pp. 69-86.

Barr, C. (1992) ‘Obsession’, in Vertigo. London: BFI, pp. 7–20.

Orpen, V. (2003) ‘Continuity Editing in Hollywood’, in Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive. London: Wallflower, pp. 16–59.