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Justin Chen The Construction of Knowledge in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Vertigo, superficially resembles the classic detective narrative. A quick structuralist analysis of the film reveals the telltale presence of a mysterious crime, a villain, a series of clues, and an investigator intent on piecing together the puzzle with which he is confronted. But in typical Hitchcock fashion, here the resemblance abruptly ends. With its complex treatment of themes such as creation, fantasy, and the blurred line between fact and fiction, Vertigo often leaves the viewer feeling alienated or distanced from the detective, John “Scottie” Ferguson, as he grapples with his own version of the truth behind Madeleine Elster’s murder. The resulting inability to identify with the movie’s protagonist raises questions about the nature of knowledge and its potential for objectivity. The viewer ultimately discovers that the “truth,” much like the phony Madeleine skillfully portrayed by Judy, is nothing more than someone else’s construction. Vertigo’s opening scene is remarkably fast-paced. Immediately following the opening credits, the viewer witnesses a desperate chase across the rooftops of an eerily moonlit San Francisco that culminates in the plummeting death of a police officer. The chase scene also reveals Scottie’s fear of heights, a condition that he himself discusses ruefully in Midge’s apartment: “I have acrophobia. What a disease. A fear of heights. And what a moment to find out I had it”. (i) Here Hitchcock plays with and explores the viewer’s privileged status as external observer. Although Scottie simply views his discovery of his own acrophobia as an unfortunately timed incident, the moment has much greater significance for the viewer because it occurs so early in the movie and thus receives the audience’s undivided attention. In other words, these first expository scenes take on even greater import because they contextualize the movie for the viewer. With the use of an almost Kleistian dramatic irony, Hitchcock draws attention to the disconnect between audience and detective by emphasizing the third-person’s possession of privileged knowledge. Though Scottie himself may not realize how significant his phobia is, the viewer certainly does, both from the title of the movie and the dramatic opening scenes of the movie. Perhaps this early suspicion that acrophobia will somehow figure strongly into the story’s plot leads one to look immediately upon the character of Gavin Elster with a certain degree of distrust. During his rather awkward meeting with Scottie, Elster states, “I was sorry to hear about that thing in the papers,” and he goes on to inquire whether fear of heights is “a permanent physical disability.” To Scottie, Elster’s comments are undoubtedly nothing more sinister than should be expected from a polite acquaintance. But to the external viewer who is conscious of acrophobia’s inevitably crucial role in the movie, Elster’s interest in Scottie’s infirmity provokes a certain feeling of unease. Nevertheless, the detective and the audience are soon reunited in one point of view when Elster reveals the mysterious and supernatural story surrounding his wife, Madeleine. So fantastic is his tale that the viewer automatically identifies with Scottie’s skeptical reaction. At this point, the movie has returned to a more traditional detective-story format—united in cautious disbelief, Scottie and the audience share one point of view as the bizarre clues unfold. Indeed, this unity of perspective is strongly emphasized during the next few scenes, in which Scottie follows the supposed Madeleine around the city and tries to make some sense of her unusual activities. As Scottie unearths and connects the hints that Madeleine skillfully leaves for him, the viewer essentially engages in the same activity from outside the movie. Hitchcock emphasizes this parallel detective work by the use of certain film techniques. For instance, as Madeleine drives through the streets of San Francisco, the camera continually alternates its focus from a close-up of Scottie’s face to a shot of the elusive green Jaguar in front of him. So great is the tension built up by this almost irritatingly repetitive back-and-forth that when Madeleine finally parks her car in a quiet alley and Scottie follows her into a dark building, the audience is genuinely nervous for him. And when the viewer observes, through Scottie’s eyes, Madeleine’s reverent meditation before the grave of Carlotta Valdes at the Mission Dolores, the mystery takes on a more inexplicable and intriguing cast for both Scottie as hired investigator and the audience as detective-once-removed. Finally, in the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the camera drives the point home with its juxtaposed zoom-ins on Madeleine and the portrait of Carlotta, which serve to highlight their eerily striking similarities. It seems that Hitchcock has—at least for the moment—reunited Scottie and the viewer as fellow observers of an increasingly uncanny story. Yet this unity is quickly called into question when Midge happens to see Madeleine emerge from Scottie’s house and drive away into the night. Midge, hurt by what she assumes is a secret love affair, asks bitterly aloud, “Well now, Johnny-o… Was it a ghost? And was it fun?” Once again, this scene distances the viewer from the detective. Scottie cannot of course see Midge nor appreciate her anger. For the audience, though, Midge’s reproachful comments are essentially another clue for unraveling the mystery. In sharp contrast to the dreamy and ghostlike Madeleine, Midge here acts as the voice of reason. She questions the motives underlying Scottie’s involvement in the case as well as the plausibility of the entire ghost story, and in so doing, she forces distance between him and the external viewer. Thus, as Scottie willingly entangles himself ever more deeply in Elster’s clever fabrication, the audience maintains a certain objectivity and skepticism, and the ultimate result is a dissociation of the two points of view. Hitchcock emphasizes this divergence in the climactic romance scene by the ocean, in which Scottie ejaculates in frustration, “If I could just find the key… find the beginning, put it together!” His intensity is striking, but more importantly, the audience gets a glimpse in this scene of Scottie’s desire to discover a “key,” a magical explanation that will cause all the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. Madeleine’s response to Scottie’s heartfelt outburst is striking: “And so explain it away? But there is a way to explain it, you see. If I’m mad? That would explain it, wouldn’t it?” After Scottie prevents Madeleine from jumping in the water a second time, the music crescendos to a climax and the two would-be lovers passionately embrace against a stunning backdrop of crashing ocean waves. Yet throughout this whole glorious scene, there is a pronounced feeling of falsehood. Even if one assumes that the almost ridiculously exaggerated surging forces of nature in the background are nothing more than a romantic Hollywood device of the time, the fact that Scottie is kissing another man’s wife still ought to provoke feelings of unease, and not just in the conservative members of the audience. One cannot help but feel that Scottie is getting swept away in an endeavor not entirely honest. The subsequent scene in Midge’s apartment highlights these feelings of dissonance by exploring the tensions that exist between the real world, symbolized by Midge’s down-to-earth practicality, and the overly-romanticized fantasy world embodied by the sultry Madeleine. By painting her own face—not to mention her prominent red glasses—into her version of the painting of Carlotta, Midge symbolically attempts to destroy fictitious and improbable narrative that Scottie increasingly accepts as reality. The heightening tension between Scottie’s two worlds suggests to the third-person observer that, in literary terms, Elster’s constructed sjuzet may not coincide with the underlying fabula. As in Borgés’ “Death and the Compass” or Eco’s The Name of the Rose, the protagonist appears to be more interested in pursuing a fabricated version of events than the more prosaic but accurate fabula, a fact of which Midge’s presence constantly reminds us. Indeed, Midge’s ironic painting does nothing to dispel Scottie of his delusions. As he continues to probe Madeleine’s mind for possible explanations of her behavior, he becomes more and more entrenched in Elster’s seductive fiction. Finally, when Madeleine dreamily describes the Spanish village of her nightmare, Scottie falls right into the trap and fastens upon the idea of the mission at San Juan Bautista, triumphantly concluding, “It’s all there. It’s no dream.” So convinced is he that he declares, “I’m going to take you there—to the Mission—this afternoon. And when you see it, you’ll remember when you saw it before, and that will finish your dream and destroy it.” Interestingly, Scottie’s enthusiasm for this solution is reminiscent of his earlier desire to find the “key” to Madeleine’s psychological ailments. When the two finally reach the mission, the far-fetched nature of Scottie’s speculations becomes abundantly clear. Referencing an aspect of Madeleine’s dream, Scottie gestures at a wooden figure and exclaims, “Here’s your gray horse!,” concluding weakly, “Course he’d have a tough time getting in and out of a stall without being pushed, but still… You see? There’s an answer for everything!” It is clear that though the original application of Carlotta’s story to Madeleine was Elster’s idea, Scottie has taken that narrative and molded it into something uniquely his own. Elster certainly did not consider the wooden gray horse in the stables of San Juan Bautista during his original construction of the legend. Rather, Scottie has taken an insignificant detail from Madeleine’s version of the story and greatly magnified its significance to fit his own theories. He strongly believes that he has discovered the truth, not out of any small-minded egotistical arrogance, but simply because he believes that in his version of the story can be found the cure for his beloved Madeleine. Yet the ludicrous nature of Scottie’s reasoning suggests to the viewer that something about his proposal is amiss. Just before Madeleine’s dramatic disappearance into the church, she utters revealingly, “It’s not fair, it’s too late. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, it shouldn’t have happened!” At the time of this pronouncement, Scottie and the audience both assume that Madeleine is engaging in a tortured internal dialogue with Carlotta’s invasive spirit. But the true significance of the pronouncement is that it signals the first appearance of Judy Barton, the gifted Kansan actress who has momentarily stepped out of character to reveal her love for Scottie. The audience only appreciates this delicate point later in the movie when Judy, who has been rediscovered by Scottie, reveals the entire fabula of the story in a long, heartfelt letter that she eventually destroys. She writes poignantly, “I made the mistake. I fell in love. That wasn’t the plan.” At this point in the movie, any unity of perspective between Scottie and the viewer that existed earlier is completely destroyed, for the entire story has been revealed and the only mystery left is how Scottie will discover and come to terms with the truth himself. Indeed, the wonderfully tense climax in the mission tower revolves around Scottie’s belated and horrifying discovery of Judy’s role in the entire affair and the reality behind the woman he thought he loved. In her frightened condition, Judy bursts out, “Love me! Keep me safe!” But in a subtle reference to Madeleine’s last words, Scottie chillingly responds, “Too late… too late… there’s no bringing her back.” The haunting finality of these lines connote a sense of inevitability and powerlessness. It is as though the narrative that Scottie believed and in part helped to create has outgrown even him, and is no longer subject to his influence. He must stand idly by and watch as the events once again spiral out of his control. Only at this point does Hitchcock finally reunite Scottie with the audience, for, much like the movie viewer, he realizes that he is nothing more than a passive observer of events external to himself and removed from his own ability to alter them. Scottie now understands that what he loved was nothing more than a role skillfully acted by Judy, a specially constructed part in Elster’s play that was never his to dictate, and that the love he felt for Madeleine should never have existed because the person to whom it was directed was not real. These sudden revelations strike both Scottie and the viewer at the same time, during the movie’s climax, and Hitchcock finally reunites the two detective figures in their mutual understanding. Thus, Vertigo’s exploration of perspectives and creation of knowledge eventually comes full circle. Although Scottie firmly believes in the Madeleine fantasy throughout much of the movie, he eventually realizes that his motivation was essentially a hollow mixture of Elster’s fiction and his own desire, both of which combined to create the fantasy of Madeleine. Hitchcock, however, does not want the audience to fall into the same trap. Despite the fact that the viewer often engages in detective work alongside Scottie, numerous hints throughout the movie suggest that he is actually pursuing a solution of his own creation, an endeavor that must ultimately end in failure. By exploring these various themes of creation, reality, and the process of obtaining knowledge, Hitchcock emphasizes the distance or alienation that may sometimes arise between the detective and the audience, and suggests that knowledge is perhaps always constructed for subjective ends.
i) All quotes taken from www.screentalk.org’s full-text script of Vertigo. |