What are the main points of Film form and Aesthetics in Vertigo?
Use of circular imagery in cameraowrk and miss en scene
Costumes - Judy’s grey suit conveys her ice and mysterious demeanour. Green used to convey ghostly imagery of Madeline.
Bernard Herman’s score reflects circular twisted motifs and Scottie’s obsession with Madeline.
(Film Form and Asthetics) How does Bernard Herman’s score reflect Scottie’s obsession with Madeline?
The music swells and spirals just like Scottie’s mind, making us feel the pull of his obsession as if we’re experiencing it ourselves.
This musical “loop” mirrors how Scottie gets stuck in his obsession
The strings are often lush and hypnotic, giving the music a romantic but unsettling feel - This dreamlike quality reflects how Scottie isn’t in love with Madeline as a person, but with an idea, a fantasy
Herman’s use of dissonance with the unsettling harmonies and rhythms build tension, reflecting scotties obsessive and possessive parts of Scottie’s love.
What are the key points for Editing in Vertigo?
At Ernie’s restaurant cut from Scottie watching to Madeleine in the background, then, as she passes him, cut to her profile. - aligns us with his gaze. It sets up the classic Hitchcock theme of the male gaze as a form of possession or obsession.
Opening sequence cuts between a
police man reaching out, to Scottie
dangling, to the ‘vertigo shot’.- The edit positions us directly inside his psychological experience. The trauma Scottie experiences here sets the psychological tone for the entire film — obsession, guilt
Position of flashback in the narrative encouraging the spectator to sympathise with Judy and perceive events from
her perspective for the first time. - It breaks from the film’s previous alignment with Scottie’s point of view and reveals Judy’s internal world.The flashback reveals her as emotionally complex and trapped, not just an accomplice, but someone who genuinely fell for Scottie and is now suffering for it.
What are key points for sound in Vertigo?
Bernard Herrmann’s music inspired by Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.
It appears endless, chords that are never resolved, repeatedly broken. Herrmann’s love theme used when ‘Madeleine’ is on screen to indicate Scottie’s growing obsession/love for her.
The music often avoids traditional resolution, which mirrors Scottie’s emotional and psychological suspension
* Numerous, lengthy passages without dialogue, only music.
Cyclical nature of the score - Martin Scorcese said, ‘the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfilment and despair’. The repetition could allude to obsessive recurring thoughts - Herrmann often builds tension with rising and falling motifs that loop endlessly, creating a hypnotic effect - referencing the recurring spiral imagery
What are the main Representations in Veritgo focusing on Laura Mulvey?
- Laura Mulvey‘s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) examined the representation of sexual difference as active male/passive female, with women displayed as erotic objects for the characters within the film and the spectator.
Mulvey suggested that the use of male protagonist’s point of view results in the spectator identifying with the male. - Mulvey focuses on the idea of scopophilia (pleasure gained from looking) and emphasises the dominance of the patriarchal viewpoint in cinema. In other words, she argues that scopophilia is a male pleasure, because ‘the look’ is controlled my the male (therefore it is the male gaze) and directed at the female.
Women as passive – consider Midge as a challenge to this and explore how she fares in the narrative as a result of her active nature.
What are the key points of Aesthetics in Vertigo?
Saul Bass’s sequence integrates avant-garde techniques—especially abstraction and modernist design—into a mainstream Hollywood narrative, which was rare at the time.
Avant Garde means breaking traditional rules or experimenting with form and technique and mainstream ideas.
The spirals literally represent the sensation of vertigo: swirling, unsteady, and immersive.
As the spirals emerge from a woman’s eye (in a close-up), we are visually pulled into her inner psyche. This connects with Hitchcock’s obsession with the gaze
Designed by Saul Bass accompanied by Bernard Herrmann’s score a combination of emotional dream imagery and abstraction by abstract film-maker John Whitney.
He used a special pendulum that forms “modern art in motion” geometric oval shaped spirals called Lissajous waves.
