Posts Tagged ‘Vertigo’
McKittrick Hotel
Top: Henry Bumstead’s production sketch for Madeleine’s bedroom at the McKittrick Hotel.
Bottom: The final scene as it appears in Vertigo (1958).
Interval: 1 year
Vertigo. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Wri. Alec Coppel, Samuel A. Taylor. Perf. James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes. Paramount Pictures, 1958.
Becoming Madeleine
“From inside Judy’s room, the whole room is suffused with that green light, filtered through fine-mesh curtains. As Judy emerges from the bathroom, competing her visual transformation into Madeleine, she is bathed in green and shot through a hazy filter that recalls the soft, dreamy lighting of the garden sequence.
Once again, Scottie has withdrawn from reality and into a romantic fantasy. As he kisses Judy/Madeleine, the camera circles dizzyingly — vertiginously, you might say — around them and the whole world bursts into green — green, the color of rebirth, of growth. Everything seems to be complete for Scottie once again — except for a disturbing blue flashback to the Mission. But Scottie shrugs it off and obsessively embraces his Madeleine — even though she’s really Judy. Green floods the frame once again.
At this point, Scottie is more responsible for snuffing out Judy than he is for Madeleine’s death. Indeed, he’s smothered Judy to death with Madeleine.”
- Jim Emerson
Founding Editor-in-Chief, RogerEbert.com
“Hitchcock’s film [Vertigo] is about obsession, which means that it’s about circling back to the same moment, again and again… And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfillment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for — he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession.”
- Martin Scorsese, 2004
Read Jim’s complete analysis here.
View a synopsis of Vertigo’s color symbolism through still frames here.
