The obsession with the past in Hitchcock's Vertigo

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2003)

All great art reflects human emotion, and Alfred Hitchcock has mastered the art of cinema. Emotions and feelings are the basics of the themes that almost all Hitchcock films center around. Theme is defined by Webster's dictionary as a subject or topic on which a person writes or speaks, it is something for a certain proposition or discussion. Hitchcock uses his themes as the basis for what he wants to be discussed. There are often many subtle ideas that are thrown into each movie for the purpose of elaborating on the main theme. In Hitchcock's film Vertigo, the main theme is obsession with the past, and how things used to be. Each character in the story has a strong obsession to a portion of history, or how things `used to be.' Determination to get back what one once possessed, love for something that is no longer there, the identity crisis that follows sick nostalgia, and reality versus artificiality problems that erupt due to all the previous statements are all other issues relating to obsession that come up during Vertigo. As the film opens up in Midge Wood's (Barbara Bel Geddes) apartment, it is initially clear the lost past and the urge to recreate it are (and are going to be) very affluent in the movie. John `Scottie' Ferguson (James Stewart) cannot wait to be cured from his fear of heights so he can go back to his detective work, and Midge's only love has been and will ever be Scottie. The next scene is in Gavin Elster's (Tom Helmore) office (a friend from college, the past), he brings up that he wishes San Francisco had never changed, and mentions how his wife is haunted by a dead person and stares at the `Portals of the Past' across the San Francisco Bay. Nostalgia is seen in the bookstore with old pictures and maps of San Francisco with the historian and of course with the Carlotta story in itself. The film has three distinct movements, as in another Hitchcock film North by Northwest, which shows the evolutions of the "hero"; in Vertigo the movements show the evolution of Scottie's obsession with the past. The first section is just Scottie following Madeline Elster (Kim Novak) - Scottie trying to recreate his detective work. The second part starts as he is falls in love with Madeline (someone `dead') - the following then becomes a romantic obsession and he wants her to change back to being `not crazy.' The third movement is as Scottie meets Judy Barton (Kim Novak) - as the attempt to change her into Madeline starts. Obsession is defined as an unhealthy or irrational compulsion. Compulsives allude to repetition, and the spiral in the Vertigo symbolizes repetition. The spiral is first seen during the credits, then with Madeline's hair, and finally with the spiral staircase in the church. A spiral never ends, just as Scottie does not want to forget about the past, especially not Madeline. Scottie's obsession with the past comes in full force in the last section of the film when he tries to change Judy into Madeline. At the store buying her clothes, and finally in the hotel room as she walks out of the bathroom he literally see his eyes shining (by the lighting) with desire and passion when Judy finally looks exactly like Madeline. Hitchcock shows how this is only an illusion with the green light coming from the Empire Hotel sign outside the window. Judy is absorbed by the green because Scottie is disconnected from the reality of the present and lost in the artificiality of the past. Green lighting is used throughout Vertigo to illuminate the feeling of dream-like feelings. During the scene while Scottie and `Madeline' are wandering through the woods, they stopped to discuss the Sequoia Semperviva trees, the trees that are evergreen and ever living. This is a subtle hint at Hitchcock's suggestion that bringing back the past in its entirety and its reality is impossible.