Essay on ‘Vertigo’: Film Analysis

‘It is both interesting and revealing to look at how film characters are made recognizable and how we understand them, what our culture portrays as being representative of masculinity and femininity, and what this tells us about our understanding of gender, sexuality, and society.’

J. Nelmes (2011) 'Gender and Film', Introduction to Film Studies. Routledge. Use this statement as a basis for discussing two films from Term 2. How do your chosen films construct notions of ‘gender’, and how do they invite us to look at women and women’s experiences in particular ways?

In this paper, I am discussing the notions of gender particularly the representation of the female gender and how women in film are subjected to the male gaze as discussed by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey. The film I will be analyzing in this essay is Vertigo by acclaimed director Alfred Hitchcock. Laura Mulvey states in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.”( Mulvey, Laura. 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.' Screen 16, no. 4 (1975): 6-18.) Laura Mulvey states that women have two roles in the film: erotic objects for the characters in the story and erotic objects for the spectator.

The sexualization of women has fostered wide debate in film theory. Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 analysis of the male gaze brought this issue to attention, when she argues that viewers watch a film from a male perspective and female characters are deemed as objects rather than subjects. Critics in regard to a wide variety of films have explored the idea of the male gaze, both within the Classical Hollywood era and beyond. It has become particularly noted with the work of Alfred Hitchcock, most notably his 1958 film Vertigo.

One film I analyzed where the male gaze plays a particularly prominent role is Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Vertigo focuses on Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), a police detective who is forced to retire when he comes to the conclusion he has a fear of heights hence the title Vertigo. Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), Scottie's old college friend hires him to track his wife, to follow his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who he believes is bewitched by Carlotta Valdes's grandmother. As he stalks Madeleine, Scottie becomes obsessed with her, and upon her suicide, becomes distraught. Later on, Scottie notices a woman, Judy, who looks distinctively similar to Madeleine. The two develop a bond and Scottie becomes infatuated with transforming her into Madeleine. It is revealed that Judy and Madeleine are in fact the same person, with Judy hired by Gavin to play his wife as part of a murder plot.

In many Hitchcock films, including Vertigo, the male gaze is not just evident — it also forms part of the film’s overall arching narrative. Scottie (James Stewart) is hired to literally watch Madeleine and through this process, becomes obsessed with her based on her mere appearance alone. As the film continues, Scottie’s obsession with Madeleine deepens. He continues to develop the same fixation with Judy when he spots her in the street and is reminded of Madeleine but then begins to transform Judy into an exact visual replica of Madeleine in a quest to create the ideal woman hence the theory called the male gaze.

Laura Mulvey outlines two features of the male gaze voyeuristic and fetishistic that can both be witnessed in Vertigo. She defines voyeurism as the pleasure that comes from watching others transform them into objects of sexual desire (Mulvey 1975). She states that fetishistic viewing, on the other hand, involves “the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous. This builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself” (Mulvey 1975, pg. 12).

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While Scottie’s gaze over Madeleine starts off in voyeuristic nature, in that he enjoys watching her from a distance, his gaze over Judy is more of a fetishistic gaze. Scottie finds satisfaction and pleasure in making Judy look like Madeleine, and it helps ease his guilt over his inability to prevent her suicide. The way Madeleine looks and is looked at are key focus points throughout the entire film. At first, she is compared to Carlotta through her identical hairstyle and supposed relationship. Following this, when Judy is styled to look like Madeleine, every part of Madeleine and Judy’s appearance is placed under scrutiny to ensure the ideal woman is perfect down to every detail, from the identical grey suit to the hair color and Carlotta's hairstyle. Even the way she is ‘modeled’ must be perfect, with Scottie telling Judy to sit by the fire or the pair heading back to Ernie’s so Scottie can recreate his exact visual memory of Madeleine. Judy’s appearance in the story marks the point where the film shifts from a voyeuristic gaze to a fetishistic one.

Mulvey speaks of an active male role and a passive female role, where male characters, including the usually male protagonist, drive the story forward and have an active influence on the outcome of the story (Mulvey 1975). Female characters support male characters and may cause them to act in a certain way, be it out of love, fear, concern, anger, or other.

Scottie is the protagonist of Vertigo and rarely do we gain insight into other characters from a perspective other than his own — we are even shown his nightmares. The two main exceptions to this are when we see Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) furious at herself for painting the portrait of herself as Carlotta and when Judy reveals the murder plot through a letter she writes for Scottie. These scenes still revolve around Scottie however and the women’s motives are about wanting Scottie’s love, yet throughout the film, they do nothing to act on these feelings — they are passive. This highlights another level at which the male gaze is at play — women also see themselves through the eyes of men. Both women try to style themselves in such a way as to appeal to Scottie. As Scottie does not see Midge in a romantic sense, she goes largely ignored throughout the film. “One of the more benign of Hitchcock’s many bespectacled female characters, Midge is a ‘motherly’ type, as the film continually emphasizes, too prosaic for Scottie’s romantic imagination” (Modleski 1988, pg.88). Judy, on the other, allows Scottie to mold her into Madeleine in the hope that it will make him love her.

Mulvey states that the camera represents a masculine lens of view, and it is through this point of view that the viewer, be it female or male, witnesses the film. She notes three levels of spectatorship associated with cinema — that of the camera, the characters on screen, and the cinema audience (Mulvey 1975). The camera, while not intrusive, is set to represent a male perspective due to the way women are depicted on screen and the male point of view it often represents. Shots may linger on a woman’s form, pan across her body, or show close-ups of certain features to portray women in an erotic way. For example, when Scottie views Madeleine in the bar store, there is a shot, seen from Scottie’s frame of view, where she walks towards the camera, slowly turns, and walks back in the opposite direction.

We see Madeleine from the front, side and back, and a long shot allows the viewer to take in Madeleine’s entire figure, from her high heels to her tight-fitting grey suit and neat blonde hair. The characters in the film can also push a male perspective, as most protagonists in the Classical Hollywood era are male, and stories are told from their point of view. The audience watching the film, therefore, watch it from a male perspective. Mulvey also sees watching as an active male role and being looked at as a passive female role, so when viewers watch characters on screen, they take on the active male role.

Mulvey has garnered the praise of many film critics, others are brasher of her idea of the male gaze and offer alternative interpretations. T seeks to question or redefine Mulvey’s stance on gender positions in the gaze, the heterosexuality of the gaze, and the idea that the gaze represents an exclusively male voyeuristic pleasure (Manlove 2007). Theorists have also sought to further analyze the role of the gaze within Hitchcock films such as Vertigo, offering a range of alternative readings. Modleski states that Hitchcock both constructs and deconstructs the male spectator through a captivation with femininity that questions male identity and allows for a female spectator of the film. She states “we have seen how one of the major attractions of Scottie to Madeline is his identification with her, an identification that the film works to elicit in the audience as well: we are identifying with Scottie identifying with Madeleine. Woman becomes the point of identification for all of the film’s spectators” (Modleski 1988, pg. 99).

Laura Mulvey’s discernment of the male gaze in film theory is a stepping-stone in revealing the widespread gender differences that female characters face in the film. As one of the first prominent feminist film theorists, she has generated widespread discussion of the gaze and the representation of women within cinema and culture.