Themes in Vertigo

Joseph Ruwe
Philosophy of Film
Dr. Langguth
                                                Themes in Vertigo

            Part of what makes Vertigo such a fascinating film is the themes that are apparent throughout the movie. Themes give depth and meaning to a film, and in my opinion make it worth watching over and over again rather than seeing it once and that being the end of it. Good themes that connect with an audience give the viewer a relationship with the film that drives them to revisit the film in order to experience and think about the theme again.

            A theme or moral that I found in Vertigo is the relationship between a man and woman, specifically the aspect of fidelity in that relationship. There seems to be a widespread opinion that men are dogs who have a hard time being faithful to their wives.  I felt that Hitchcock took that idea and showed that men are not as unfaithful and cavalier about their love lives and relationships as some people seem to think. In Vertigo, Ferguson fell in love with Madeleine. He lost her through her duplicity, yet continued to love her, even to the point of falling for another girl simply because she resembled Madeleine.  A representation that men deep down only want to love one woman. Unfortunately, because of the deceitfulness of the fairer sex, men are often confused. They want to love only one woman, but because  women continually change and deceive, men are sometimes forced to find other women.

            Another theme is the destruction created by romanticized ideas. Midge was the kind of woman that Ferguson should have settled for. She was stable, reliable, and honest. Instead he pushed away her attempts at attracting him in exchange for a relationship with someone who he sees as exotic and romantic. This unrealistic romanticism is what ultimately kills Judy. She pleaded with Ferguson to love her for her, and forget about his pipedream girlfriend, but he couldn't. So he dressed her up like a doll, and pursued an unrealistic goal, and as a result she died. He couldn't get over Madeleine. He had a fairy tale idea of how his love like should look, and he refused to view it through a practical lens.

            Another theme is the spiral theme. There were many different times throughout the movie where Hitchcock employed the use of spiraling, from the opening scene, to the spiral-like staircase in the bell tower, to the spiral hair-do that Madeleine wears. I see the spiral as a metaphor for the futility of life. Like a drill boring into a piece of wood, the harder we try to go forward and make progress, the deeper the hole that we dig for ourselves becomes, until we ultimately spiral out of control. Ferguson strives to make progress in his life. He falls in love, she dies, he does the impossible and brings her back from the dead by recreating Madeleine. But in the end, despite all his work, she ends up spiraling to her death, out of his control to her death from the top of the bell tower.