Vertigo (by Hitchcock)

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Vertigo
This film can be said to function in several perspectives at the same time. Plainly, the film is about a mysterious- suspense story which is about a man who is cheated to partner in committing a crime, murder. The story analyses the unraveling of events in the plan to commit the murder. On psychological perceptive, the story reveals a circulars mind that tries to look unto a place to focus on. And finally, on figurative perceptive, it analysis a man who has lost his desire for death and in hope of redeeming her, he goes under to find ways of doing it. The film’s complexity is not only limited to this scenario only but also its success in shaping up the clear line between subjectivity and objectivity. The audience’s objectivity is replaced by the main characters’, Scottie, fantasies and passion through taking the viewer into his thoughts.
Scottie who is a police detective has vertigo which refers to the psychological fear of high places. This incurred to him because of the narrow escape while in a rooftop chase. Addition to that, his college dies as he tries to safe him. This complicates the whole issue and in the rest of the story he remains emblematically and psychologically suspended from that rooftop. The detective takes on a job on a woman (Madeleine) who he has never met and whose husband (Gavin Elster) is worried on his behavior and character. She is a frequent traveler and spying her makes him a traveler too. The woman believes she is the rebirth of the century belle named Carlotta. As the detective follows her everywhere he is obsessed by her spirit. The film director reinforces the loss of objectivity by photographing this main characters wondering in a small motion. Scenes like; Scottie following this woman on the streets with a car which appears to float above the pavements and lively background music makes the objectivity more strong. Due to the strange places Madeleine visits and her appearance make the detective’s obsession more real on what the woman claimed to be. The viewer is left wondering because no more information is given apart from what is portrayed by Scottie.
San Francisco and its environs becomes scenery due to the romance that develops between detectives and this strange woman. Hitchcock uses landscape and geography to add appetite to the follow of ...