Vertgio: plot, narrative, structure, production + conext

4 main plot points

• 1st- meeting Scottie and Scottie meeting Gavin Elster; Madeleine's curious behavior is first outlined; Scottie is tasked with observing her.
• 2nd- scene in Scottie's apartment following his rescue of Madeleine; first scene where they directly interact with one another; personal relationship is established.
• 3rd- Scottie's failure to stop Madeleine's apartment suicide.
• 4th- Judy reveals the truth about her disguise  and the events that occurred after her "death" by writing a letter to Scottie.

Narrative... Not plot


-Narrative: A spoken or written accounts of connected events; a story
-Plot: The main events that occur within a film.

• 2 distinct, but linked narratives.
• 1st- Madeleine Elster narrative.
• 2nd- Judy Barton narrative.
• Linked together by central theme surrounding Scottie: self-possession + control in a dangerous and uncertain world.
• Film in 2 halves- separated by Madeleine's suicide.

3 Act Structure

• 3 acts, 2 halves + a spiral
• midpoint marked by Scottie falling to save Madeleine.
• If he saved her, he would've completed a narrative circle.
• This fails and 'spirals' into a psychological breakdown.
• This spiral continues when he fails in act 3.

Production context

-1920s art-film movement brought through experimentation + strong us of imagery.
- German expressionism (Fritz Lang)- method of exposing the inner life of characters through, unusual camera angles, moody lighting + exaggerating mise-en-scene.
-Soviet montage cinema- Hitchcock's elaborate editing techniques came from soviet film in the 1920s.
-Hitchcock particularly acknowledged the significance of the Kuleshov experiment, from which he derived the fondness for the point view short + for building sequences by cross-cutting between person seeing and things being seen.

-One of Vertigo's main themes was to find the ideal woman. There are links between Scottie and his pursuit of the perfect woman and Hitchcock's admiration for Grace Kelly.

 He saw her as the standard actress as she had the beauty and the style of acting. When she left to marry the Prince of Monaco, her influence caused him to appoint Kim Novak as the lead actress.

Gender politics

• Re-identification of gender roles- loss of male identity + sexuality was a major concern.
• Vertigo acts out the struggle for socially recognized gender roles, mostly through a battle for sexual domination between Scottie + Madeleine/Judy.
• Scottie and Madeleine's relationship encapsulates 1950s-60s America.
• Madeleine's character is not only a "femme fatale" character, but furthermore, cunningly powerful. Scottie is seen as old school compared to Madeleine's more superior and dominant role in post war society.
• During WWII, women came flooding into the workforce, but were reinstated into their former passive routines following men's return from battle.
• Movies, magazines + newspapers extolled the importance of motherhood.
• Vertigo supports the idea of the submissive domestic female through the character of
  
  Madeleine.
• Many films at the time examined questions of gender.
• Vertigo deals with many concerns through the creation of a deeply represented man, contained by his fears and driven by obsessions.
• Scottie is the "typical" 1950s man, reduced in stature/health + and in turn makes him the metaphor of the stereotypical middle-class and aged man, undone by forces over which he has lost control.
• Vertigo is one of the most powerful investigations of heterosexual panic undertaken in 1950s film.

-What gives Hitchcock his name as the "Master of Suspense" is created through his powerful use of sound. This sound can range from a piece of music such as the uncomfortable string piece in "Psycho" through to the use of diegetic sound apart from the dialogue, such as the water coming out of the shower in the same film. It goes to show that to heighten tension it doesn't always have to be a piece of music that makes a scene so frightening.

- This is similarly scene in his films such as Rear Window, North to Northwest. and The Birds.