I think when everyone sees Jimmy Stewart's character and meets him for the first time, you want to love him. He just seems like a normal, average, decent guy. As both the movie and his obsession with Madeleine progress, you start to second guess yourself and eventually say to yourself, "this guy is one, creeeeepppppy sob." You identify with him in the respect that yes Madeleine is beautiful and you really could easily fall in love with the image of her. She is what he and the audience desires. He is simply doing what his friend asks him to by following her around and it quickly turns into an obsession that eventually he cannot control and one that consumes him. This is part of what the scopophilia refers to. He starts to receive visual pleasure in watching her and also we as viewers receive this same pleasure watching the film.
Madeleine reminded me of Laura in a way that we fall in love with the image or idea of her, and yet we never really learn who she is. She was just so visually relaxing and I didn't get a feeling of pleasure but more of a feeling of relaxation and relief when I saw her. Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) quickly falls in love with her and when he meets Judy, she reminds him of Madeleine, but it is not enough for him. He also becomes obsessed with transforming her into an exact image of Madeleine and wont stop until every detail is exactly as he remembers from her. I guess Madeleine represents an ideal image of what society finds glamorous and beautiful.
Midge represents the opposite. She seems very normal and plain, wears glasses (which personally, I prefer) and just isn't what you see when you look at 50's glamour girls. She is very normal and I really liked her in the beginning and even when she flips a switch, you still are like ahhh weird but.......she can't be that weird. I like her because she seems like she tries to keep Scottie grounded throughout the film as a friend/almost motherly figure. She then tries to find information about what Scottie is doing and then attempts to find more and more information about the case Scottie is working on and eventually realizes that she will never get it out of him. Her painting of her face on Carlotta's body really jarred me and freaked me out, but I still liked her.
Vertigo is one of the most interesting/freaky/disturbing movies I have ever seen. I saw it once a while ago and didn't remember many details going into this viewing of the film. I am a pretty big Hitchcock fan and was excited to see this on the list.
I too liked Midge. In that very first scene I saw her as this friendly, plain but smart woman and I completely didn't see her weirdness coming. The portrait is what really caused me to feel uneasy about her. I thought she was attractive in her own way but to see her head on such a regal old-fashioned portrait was jolting. After that scene I started to like her again throughout, but I could never look at her as that completely normal, comforting character again.
ReplyDeleteThere were so many ties between this movie and Laura, but I thought this one took the obsession with images to a whole other level, and I definitely agree that it was one of the most disturbing movies I've seen in a long time.
I like how you made the point about how we are made to fall in love with both Laura and Madeline, but never really get to know them. This is a really good observation that ties these two movies so close together.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you speak of the relief you feel when when seeing her. Throughout so much of the film you feel like she disappears that we feel that having her in plain sight is comforting as we worry for her health. This, even for the viewer, translates oddly into a visual obsession which greatly ties into scopophelia
I agree that when you first meet Scotty you really want to fall in love with him as you described. I remember watching Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart playing a character you did end up falling in love with, and I tried to compare the two naturally,but it just falls through...too bad. The comparison to Laura was also very nice, I did like that both Laura and Madeline were looked more to as images rather than actual people or characters. Maybe that's why I wasn't entirely connected to either one of them as compared to how connected I was to other characters in there stories.
ReplyDeleteSome really, really good points here, especially on the knowing way that Hitchcock plays with our own fascinations, desires and sympathies.
ReplyDeleteI really want more on the freakout with Midge though. She's a lot less easy to work with than Judy/Madeline---so normal, soothing and girl next door, but then the strange painting and the slightly inappropriate motherliness....