Left Hanging: Vertigo as Neo-Noir

Rating: 10/10 (9 May 2003)

CAUTION: SPOILER AHEAD!!!
The film noir Vertigo, (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted from the novel d'Entre les Morts (The Living and the Dead) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac uses a structure that leaves the audience hanging by creating loose ends in the plot and through ellipses in the story. The story follows Det. John 'Scottie' Ferguson (James Stewart) as he is hired by an old friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) to look into his wife's infatuation with a mysterious woman named Carlotta Valdez. Ferguson's acrophobia, or intense fear of heights, has caused him to retire as a detective and he now works as a freelance private detective. Without giving away the plot, it is hard to describe the structure of this film. Throughout there are plot twists which change the entire direction of the film which leave the past behind. The audience is left wondering what really happened.
Even from the very beginning of the film, the audience is left hanging. It opens with Ferguson and a policeman chasing a fugitive across the rooftops of buildings in San Francisco. Ferguson falls, but hangs onto a flimsy water drain looking down six stories to the ground. The policeman with Ferguson attempts to save him, but falls to his death. It is not explained how Ferguson actually escapes his predicament, which seems unlikely. He could have pulled himself up, but the flimsy water drain would have snapped. Also, no one else was around to help him any time soon, so it becomes questionable if he could have been helped. In the next scene, Ferguson talks about wearing a corset with his friend Marjorie 'Midge' Wood (Barbra Bel Geddes). He is also using a cane. If Ferguson had fallen from the drain, he would be either dead, or have sustained a traumatic injury, so his injuries do not offer any clues as to what happened. From this point, the audience is first exposed to the element of the film which keeps them hanging, just like Ferguson on the drain.
In addition to leaving the audience wondering, Vertigo utilizes its ellipsoidal structure to give an exposition to the story. The first scene of the film starts out with a past event that gives way to the present. Ferguson's incident on the rooftop gives way to a present day conversation with Wood, which allows the audience to understand why Wood is so concerned when Ferguson attempts to climb a chair. She knows that if he does his vertigo would set in for him. Through this ellipse in time, we learn of Ferguson's weakness. We see a past traumatic experience of Ferguson and then move onto the present time.
The next part of the film consists of Ferguson conducting the investigation for his old friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Elster wants to find out why his wife, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) is seemingly possessed by a mysterious dead woman named Carlotta Valdez. In her dreamlike state, she continuously attempts suicide, trying to rid the spirit of Valdez from her body. At one point, she falls in the San Francisco bay and Ferguson pulls her out. They begin to fall in love, but Elster's condition seems to get worse and worse. She actually thinks she is Valdez. Then, on a trip to the Mission San Juan Bautista, Elster falls from the tower. Ferguson is blamed for her death, as he was stricken with vertigo attempting to climb the stairs to save her.
This is when the film becomes a uniquely structured film. In typical film noir and murder mysteries, there is a final conclusion which gives all the solutions to the mystery. But in Vertigo the twist occurs in the middle of the film, exposing Ferguson's friend Gavin Elster's plan to murder his wife. Ferguson soon finds out that the Madeleine Elster he met earlier is a decoy, actually a department store clerk named Judy Barton. As the audience discovers later, the real Madeleine Elster took a dive off the mission tower. The timing of this revelation disorients the audience. Accustomed to an explanatory conclusion, they may become uncomfortable, as it is what creates tension in the film. The anticipation of the all explanatory conclusion makes for entertainment. Now the focus of the film shifts from the murder to Ferguson, who seemingly has lost his mind in despair for his deceased lover. As he falls deeper into a spiral of despair, Ferguson becomes the confusing character.

While the film follows Ferguson, his motivations and intentions are confusing. At one point, he wants Barton to dress up exactly like Elster. His infatuation with detail makes it unclear if he is in love with Barton, or if he cannot get over the death of the woman he thought he knew. But, the audience does not know if Ferguson knows that Barton is the imposter, so it seems as though his actions are the desperate attempts to resuscitate his lost love. Maybe Ferguson is interested only in the physical appearance of Barton dressed up like Elster, not her real personality. This raises questions, because when he succeeds in making Barton up like the decoy she played earlier, this fantasy realized does not satisfy him. Maybe this is because Ferguson already knows that she is manipulating him yet again. Although Barton shows sympathy for him, she seems to feed off his money and care. All the while, she is hiding the true story behind the murder, which is malicious as it is. By not telling him, she is building up the damage that would be done if Ferguson were to find out the truth. There is no reason why someone in love would subject their lover to the torment of lost love. Even if Barton knew that this revelation would break Ferguson, she should have alerted him to this information.

Barton's motivations become acceptable after Ferguson reads her letter, which creates a flashback showing the circumstances under which she was placed at the time of the murder. It seems as though she did not know that the real Elster would be murdered. At this point in the film, Ferguson is in the position to decide his fate. As a fervent detective, he would destroy his integrity by forgetting Barton was involved, or break the law by not exposing the murder. In the climax of the film as Ferguson and Barton argue and struggle at the top of the tower at the Mission San Juan Bautista, Barton falls to her death. Compared to other endings in film noir, this one is similar in the way that it leaves room for ambiguity. The entire supernatural theme present in the earlier part of the film is left hanging. The true character of Ferguson is also left in question, because his choice is left to chance. A difference between this ending and other noir endings is that it offers a balanced fate for both characters. While Ferguson loses both of his love interests, Barton dies for helping murder another woman. They both get what was coming to them.

But the audience is left hanging as the ending does not tie in the loose ends of the film, such as the supernatural element, the fate of Gavin Elster (who should have been punished himself), and why Ferguson decided to bring Barton to the mission tower in first place. This ambiguity is what characterizes this film structurally as noir. The spiral motif embodied by Ferguson's vertigo (made with rack focus), and the stairs leading to the top of the mission tower. The end of the film seems to spiral off into chance, as it does not answer many of the audience's questions.