Haunting masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2004)

Let's get one thing straight right off the top: This is one of the best films ever made (as if you haven't heard that enough reading these reviews). With that said, I'll say this. I studied this film extensively in University, and I analyzed it in terms of gender/sexual power relations. There are, of course, some kinky elements to James Stewarts's obsession in this film. What most people don't realize, is just how much that obsession is made explicit in the film, without the audience realizing. The more Scottie falls in love with (and becomes obsessed with) Madeleine, the more the real world falls away. Literally, people start to dissapear. In the beginning, when Scottie is hired to follow her, she is seem with people (in traffic, in a flower shop). As she becomes more and more the focus of Scottie's infatuation, the crowds of people thin out and dissapear altogether. The museum of Art more closely resembles a tomb, as only Madeleine's and Scotties car are parked out front. No one walks the halls of the gallery excepts Scottie, and a curator that Scottie summons for information (who only becpmes present because Scottie wants him to be there for that moment). At San Fransisco Bay, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, it is just Scottie and Madeleine. The colonial town up the coast where Madeleine takes her plunge is more of a ghost town, as there are no tourists, not a person in sight. Just the two of them. In the redwood forest. The two of them alone. It is too much of a stretch to assume that everyone in San Fransisco decided not to leave their homes that day.
The brilliance of Alfred Hitchcock's directing is that he makes the camera see what Scottie sees. He's tuning out and ignoring the other people around him, so he just sees Madeleine. Thus, the camera only sees Madeleine, and no one else. Thus, the city and the coast is left just to the two of them. Like Adam and Eve, only a tale of tragedy. This 'fixation' of both the camera and the character is what gives the film its mysterious and dreamlike quality. In a way, it's because Scottie is bewildered by Madeleine's mysterious manner, her dream-like qualities (her dream-girl qualities) that makes this film more than just a ghost story, more than a mystery or a thriller. It's much more personal than a normal movie, and it is because the camera has become a character. And that, my friends, is hard to pull off. Which is why I hold Alfred Hitchcock so highly, and which is why you should give this film a second look, if you already haven't seen it once.