Observing Scottie

Alfred Hitchcock directed the film Vertigo in 1958, and it stars John "Scottie" Ferguson, a police officer. The latter retired after experiencing harrowing incidents involving his fellow officers and suffering from severe acrophobia. As he moves through stairwells or at high altitudes, he becomes panicked and dizzy. Robert Burks directed the cinematography, and sound accompanies the action, including scenes in which a fellow officer and the girl on the chase die from falling from great heights. The film's cinematography depicts the viewpoints of the director and, to a lesser degree, the main character, Scottie. The protagonist, Scottie, is used to transfer his feelings and emotions to the audience through his actions on the screen. Vertigo can be described as a “male gaze” with opportunities that explain the dangers and opportunities presented in a male gaze. In associating the presentation of the themes with Mulvey’s assertion, the protagonist controls the film phantasy and remains the representative of power, and controls what the spectator needs to see and reflect (Mulvey 838). The essay focuses on the filming techniques that the protagonist Scottie uses to display the “male gaze” using interactive, sometimes fearful scenes across the movie.

One of the techniques used by Scottie and proposed by Mulvey (842) is subjective camera where the spectators only see the protagonist and his actions deducing their emotions from the camera positions. The camera shows what Scottie sees as well as what he fails to see to narrate to the audience. The gaze is presented to show what the main actor sees and what is not seen. Through the erotic obsession of chasing the girl, the increasingly developing concept of fear, and the subsequent despair deduced from the protagonist actions lead to the audience describing Scottie as not so a resolved police officer. The subjective camera as the work of Benjamin (19) indicates that camera productions are to be reproducible and replicas can be made. The camera is used to show the social significance of the film in most cases, the positive form that influences the society. Vertigo presents the camera as an object to show the society as an integrated mass of people with different preoccupations, the male symbolism prevailing while showing the sex differences.

The filming technique shows Scottie developing sexual emotions for the girl he is chasing. The voyeurism is shown when he falls in love with woman across the rooftops and on the buildings as he chases the woman. The camera shows how Scottie was previously a lawyer and later chose freely to be a policeman. The camera gaze also portrays how Judy conforms to Scottie’s fetishes and she recognizes her part as to conforming, performing and playing it through (to what Scottie wants) to keep the protagonist’s erotic interests. The erotic emotions are also shown by Rutland when he secretly admires how Judy could commit another crime, then he chases her, making her to confess and then he saves her becoming her hero. The narrations within Rutland’s mind also reminiscent the opinions of Scottie who has erotic fetishes on Judy.

Another technique the director of Vertigo uses to involve the audience is film narratives. The narratives are both shown in motion pictures, flashbacks and personal narratives. The film narratives tell the audience the circumstances that the protagonist is forced or prevailed to act upon shaping the perceptions of the audience. For instance, Scottie admires to be a police officer to engage in investigations and cross-examinations of the criminals. The film narratives are geared towards describing how Scottie admires the woman and the extent to which she presents a strong spirit in the chase as well the answers she courageously gives when caught. The narrative perspectives of the firm director shows how the audience is kept glued to the mission of the film. For instance, the protagonist wins when he exposes the guilt in Judy where Judy is punished. The narrations keep the audience guessing the next step in the film thus staying watching.

The male gaze is also employed as a filming technique to show how Scottie slowly develops and nurtures desire to have the woman, Judy, as his lover. The gaze is evident when Scottie confronts Judy showing his erotic love that forces the woman to breakdown. In the film, Scottie re-enacts his love and passion for a beauty through re-constructing the images of the woman he fell in love with. He watches (gazes) the image of the beauty he admired secretly. Through the gazes, he seems to reconstruct Judy as Madeleine to an extent of using force on Judy to conform in almost every detail to fit his fetish desires of the woman he loved. Judy is charismatic, masochist and exhibitionism that makes her more darling to Scottie, increasing his fetish for erotic encounter with the woman. The movie uses blonde female characters who mesmerize not only Scottie but also other characters like Rutland who seem to have physical or psychological handicaps.

Erotic involvement in movies is a mechanisms through which the audience is engaged to the end. Chances are that when erotic scenes are created, the audience creates interest in knowing what happens next between the appealing couples. In the film Vertigo, the protagonist is presented as a super-hero with symbolic orders (Mulvey 842) having all attributes of the patriarchal super-ego. The moral ambiguity of the movie is shown through Scottie the protagonist who lulls the audience into a false sense of security through castigating the audience to act bravely. Rutland also shows aspects of erotic arousal when he admires how Judy can act crime for him to rescue her and present himself as her hero.

The aspect of active look as presented in how the characters appear also influences the perception of the audience. Scottie appears as acrophobic police officer but who has strong courage to pursue Judy, exposing her guilt while at the same time achieving his imminent desires to patronize her as his lover. Erotic engagement of the characters in the movie further strengthen the active looks that further create interest and build characters that the audience falls in love with. The active look also presents the audience with options of vilifying or praising the characters thereby following their actions to the end of the film. The active look also presents the audience with the split encapsulated in sex differences as well as the male symbolisms presented as hero (Mulvey 842). Active look is also presented by Mark Rutland whose gaze masquerades as the “perfect presentable symbolic” hero. The director of the film Vertigo shows Rutland’s falling in love with the guilty Judy, especially where the looks shows him becoming obsessed with Judy’s guilt and her secrets too. Rutland wants to see the woman in crime then make her confess before he saves her, thus admiring to save her and become her hero.

The image of Scottie is also presented by the camera tricks including the dolly zoom where the camera moves on dolly whole changing the focal length of the lens. The cinematic trick appears in scene one where Scottie and a fellow officer pursue a runaway criminal across the rooftops where Scottie trips, ending up hanging off a gutter on top of the building. The scene helps display Scottie who is left hanging and terrified as his fellow police officer dies. Camera tricks in Vertigo include moving the camera away or towards the subject, an aspect of “dollying” that also involves zooming out or in the image. The cinematic art of dolly zoom is used by Hitchcock to tell the story and fetish of Scottie who, through the camera dolly zoom, develops acrophobia. When he slips and almost falls down, he looks down to the ground, where the camera zooms for the first time in the movie. The zoom shows terrified Scottie who develops acrophobia through his facial changes. The technique is also used when Scottie is chasing Madeleine along the wooden staircase where he looks down and gets vertigo again. The technique was thus successful in showing the mental and physical condition of the character while depicting change in characters’ life.

The movie Vertigo presents cinematic artistry in engaging the audience. The movie embraces active look among the characters to show the sexual differences and male symbolism. It uses the film narratives through Scottie to drive the agenda of the film to the audience and also engages erotic emotions through the male characters to glue the audience to the movie. Camera artistry like dolly zooming are employed to describe the conditions that inflict acrophobia in Scottie and other characters. The movie director succeeds in ensuring the protagonist conveys the intended message to the audience through the male gaze.



Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Penguin UK, 2008.

Hitchcock, Alfred, and Bernard Herrmann. Vertigo, Film. Universal, 2005.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism:Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP,1999: 833-44.