Vertigo: Obsession, Dolls, and Hell

This is a movie I'd like to see again. I had never seen it before though I'd definitely heard of it. I think every time I heard the movie title in the past, I thought of the zodiac sign 'Virgo' for some reason. That's irrelevant really but I thought I'd shed some light on my random misinterpretations.

This movie reeked of obsession. What started out as an "Okay, I'll follow your wife around for a while and see what she does", quickly turned into a creepy romance with the close watching and ultimate contact between John 'Scottie' Ferguson and Madeleine Elster (whom we find out to be Judy Barton at some point in the film). Ferguson was a cop for what I'd assume many years, so his ability to follow somebody is in his blood by this point, so it was easy for him to tackle to task. You could tell he was intrigued from the get go when Elster's outings were shown to be peculiarly random, but once he's forced to interact with her at the bay almost-drowning scene, it all went downhill for him, as far as the scopaphilia was concerned. You can tell he's feeling something for her, but I wasn't sure if he was really into her, or into the idea of figuring her out.

One way to examine it is in the title of the movie. One definition of vertigo states "a dizzying sensation of tilting within stable surroundings". If you take away Ferguson's actual Vertigo (which I'm not saying wasn't an integral part of the story), perhaps being in the detective's shoes was his stable surrounding, since he'd done it for so long, and the dizzying sensation was this obsession with fake Madeleine/Judy. Once he solves the riddle when the two clash, he's able to overcome the vertigo. Perhaps the stable surrounding and dizziness meet at a middle point where something better can endure, something more pure. But then she leaps to her death so who knows.

But about this scopaphilia. The whole idea of watching someone for pleasure, like an object, brought images of someone playing with a doll to my mind. You can stand far away and above a doll, sometimes making it do what you want, but other times letting it have a mind of it's own and living in it's own world which you might secretly follow from behind. All the while, no matter how much freedom it possesses, it's still living within the constructs of your world. Ferguson strives to recreate this doll-like image of Madaleine in Judy when they embark on their relationship. Step by step, she's pieced together, from the hair, to the clothes, to the make-up; he's making her into the doll he's come to love from watching her throughout the streets of San Fran.

As a completely different ending note, I'd like to say Midge was very creepy. I think she was fine when she was the only one in Scottie's life, able to listen to his ongoing thoughts etc, but once that was threatened, something clicked in her mind that sent her over the edge a bit. The painting she did was ridiculous as was the late night visit to his apartment after fake-Madeleine left where she says "Well now Johnny-O, was it a ghost, was it fun?". Without the late night drive-by, the painting could be seen as a humorous gesture, but in combination with the drive-by, it just shows how unstable she really was. Which is odd since she seems to be pretty grounded for most of the movie otherwise. This speaks loudly about the idea that you never know what someone might be thinking, even though they seem a certain way on the outside. I think her "plain jane" look contributed to this effect. And I don't doubt that the red sweater and red glasses were a mistake either, since she was the devil, hoping Scottie would come back to her hell secretly, and permanently. Like the devil she can't make him sell his soul to her, but she certainly wants it.