Vertigo

Vertigo, a story about a man with a crippling fear of heights, and love for a woman he cannot have. A very strange film in my opinion. Alfred Hitchcock brings the audience into Detective John Ferguson’s (James Stewart’s) world of paranoia. This creates a chilling, almost too realistic film.

From watching Vertigo I feel that Hitchcock’s directing technique is very simple. Bring everything to the center of the screen. I could probably count on one hand how many times a person who was talking was outside of the center of the screen. This forces the audience to focus on only what Hitchcock allows them to see. Hitchcock also doesn’t have many of his actors look directly into the camera. I can only remember once in this entire film in which this happens. They were always looking to the right or left of the camera. This helps the audience focus on dialogue and what Hitchcock is trying to convey in the shot.

Lighting in Vertigo was quite strange. Many of the outdoor scenes were lit as if they were indoor scenes. Creating a parallel between the actors and the background. The background looked like a picture while the actors looked normal. Causing me to zone out during some scenes from lack of clarity. A neon green type of light was used for many of the scenes at end of the movie. In Judy Barton’s (Kim Novak’s) apartment the use of this light is most apparent, because of the strange effects the light has on some shots. The two worse uses of the green lights were when Judy walks out of the bathroom, and from John’s point of view she seems to be a very blurry green mess. The second strange use of the green light was a split second when Judy gets something off the bed and her entire face becomes engulfed in green light. Hitchcock also used shadows to make some scenes become more intense with darkness surrounding the characters. For example the scene right before Judy commits suicide; they are so surrounded by darkness that she mistakes the nuns shadow for the ghost of the shipbuilder’s wife, Madeleine Elster.

The sounds used in the film become eerily familiar to a point were in the audiences mind the films main eerie/haunting score plays in their heads. The verbal usage of sound also becomes very familiar because of the limited number of characters, the audience can figure out exactly who is talking simply by the sound of their voice. This is mainly because all the main actors in the film have very distinct voices.

The costumes in Vertigo all seem to relate. They relate because of the similarity in color. The two main colors that come to mind when thinking about Vertigo are red and green. There was at least a little bit of red or green in every shot. Red can represent either bewilderment or mystery. This is because of the many times when John sees things in red. A few good examples of this fact are when John is following “Madeleine” and he is wearing a dark red suit and she is driving a green car. Another example is when John finally meets “Madeleine” and she is wearing a red robe, while he is wearing a green sweater. The color red usually represents someone who is confused about something, while green usually represents the object or person that is mysterious. Most of John’s costumes were dark colors like dark blue, red, and green suits. A color that is rarely seen but plays a significant role is blue. It represents impairment or a lack of control for ones fate. This is best represented when John is on trial for not trying to stop “Madeleine” from committing “suicide.” He is sitting quietly in his dark blue suit awaiting the decision not able to influence the jury any further.

Alfred Hitchcock didn’t become one of the best directors of all time by making bad films. All of his films have good aspects, along with bad aspects but being the genius he was the good would always overshadow the bad. Although it may not be my favorite Hitchcock film, Vertigo is still another masterpiece of cinema.