10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo.

A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens

Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X

Home Home archive

Issue 5. The Uncanny - Guest editor: Anneleen Masschelein

Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman

who doesn't exist
Author: Joyce Huntjens
Published: January 2003

Abstract (E): In this paper, the uncanniness of Vertigo is examined in terms

of the relation between man (John) and woman (Madeline), of power, and of
the gaze. The construction of Madeline reveals that she is not a woman, but
John's object-of-desire, she does not exist as such. When the mystery of
Madeline is unveiled at the end of the film, she turns out to be an ordinary
woman. John is cured from his vertigo, but at the cost of the woman's life, for
a real relation turns out to be impossible.

Abstract (F): Dans cet article, l' « unheimlich » est analysé de trois points de
vue : les rapports homme (John)/femme (Madeline), les rapprts de pouvoir, la
notion lacanienne de « regard ». la construction de Madeline montre qu'elle
n'est pas une femme, mais l'objet du désir de John, et qu'elle n'existe donc
pas en elle-même. Lorsqu'à la fin du film le mystère de Madeline est dévoilé,
elle s'avère n'être qu'une femme ordinaire. John est guéri de ses vertiges,
mais le prix à payer est la mort de la femme, car pour lui une relation avec
une vraie femme n'est pas possible.

Keywords: Hitchcock, Vertigo, woman, object-of-desire, Zizek,

One might characterise Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) as a kind of detective story with
a tragic-romantic twist, were it not for some objections that can be raised which
may reveal another level of interpretation. Why, for instance, does the viewer
never learn Elster's motif for killing his wife? Why does Elster pick out the detective
John Ferguson to shadow his wife, using the improbable story of his wife being
obsessed by the ghost of her grandmother? Why is the killer not tracked down
after the final resolution of the ins and outs of the affair? Furthermore, we may
wonder why Hitchcock reveals the truth about of Madeline's death and Judy's
double identity already halfway through the film, thus rendering the final half of
the film very slow and even irrelevant from the perspective of the detective genre.
An analysis of the film in terms of the notion of the uncanny, might provide an
answer to some of these questions, simply by pointing out the elements that add
to the "uncanniness" of Vertigo. Taking Freud's 1919 article on the uncanny as the
central point of reference, one would relate the pattern of repetition in the film -
three times someone dies due to a fall from a great height - to Freud's remarks on
the repetition compulsion. Moreover, there is the suggestion of a woman being
haunted by the spirit of her deceased great-grandmother. In the second half of the
film, finally, we encounter the theme of the doppelganger. All these elements seem
to give Vertigo a special atmosphere that perhaps can best be described as
uncanny. On closer consideration however, a comparison of the first remarks on the
detective genre with the latter on the uncanny, may give rise to some doubt
concerning the traditional motifs of the uncanny. Indeed, as I hope to demonstrate
in my analysis, the uncanny in Vertigo resides in another category than the
obvious, superficial characteristics mentioned above. We will submit the film to a
"close viewing", in order to track down the specificity of the uncanny in this film,

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 1/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
i.e., we will stick to the chronology of the film, as this also seems to be the order in
which Vertigo reveals its covert meaning.

1. The perspective
The film opens with a rather abstract shot of a steel bar against a blurry
background. Suddenly, a hand clutching to the bar, makes us realise that we are in
fact looking at a steel bar. Next, we see a man running across a roof followed by a
police officer and by a man in a grey suit. Apparently we find ourselves in the
middle of a pursuit across the rooftops of San Francisco. When the man in the grey
suit slips, he grabs hold of the gutter and finds himself suspended high above the
street. Through subjective shots, the gaze of the viewer coincides with that of the
man in the grey suit. We see through his eyes the yawning abyss to the street far
below him. Subsequently, we see how the police officer turns to him (to us as it
were) to offer his hand. However, when he stretches toward the suspended man,
the police officer slips and falls to his death.

The subjective shots from the point of view of the suspended man lead us to
presume correctly that this man, whom we will get to know as John Ferguson, will
be the main character of the story. The famous shot of John's vertigo is the most
crucial moment in the opening sequence of the film. It effectively illustrates the
captivating attraction of the depth below, which brings us to the actual experience
of vertigo. What happens to a person in this instant? It is a widely acknowledged
fact that one is subject to an immense fear of falling, while at the same time being
tempted by the call of depth. In this rare experience, the temptation to let go and
to surrender to the fall becomes almost indistinguishable from the fear of death.
This may be what flashes through John's mind when he is suspended from a gutter
high above the street. The confrontation with his own death drive will frighten and
fascinate him for the rest of the film.

In the opening sequence it becomes clear that the subjective experience of John
Ferguson will determine the rest of the story. For the main part of the film, the
viewer will be confined to John's view. In the first half of the film, we still get an
occasional shot from the perspective of John's friend Midge, suggesting some
critical distance, but soon, the viewer is entirely wrapped up in John's experience.
Only after Madeline's death and John's encounter with Judy, there is some room for
another perspective. Still, her point of view hardly amounts to more than a
marginal moment within the overall perspective of the film. As it will turn out,
John's subjective perspective through not only determinates the development of
the story, it also holds the clue to the uncanny aspect of Vertigo.

2. The difficult communication between the

sexes
We never find out how John is rescued. After the opening sequence, the story
instantly shifts to the apartment of Midge, an old friend, whom John as a student
was once engaged to for a couple of weeks. Here, we hear John say that he will be
freed from his corset the following day and that he has resigned from the police
force. Attentive viewers have already pointed out that this part of the movie
consists of many shots that are designed to keep Midge and John from appearing
but rarely within the same frame. (Wood: 375) The shots of Midge are
characterised by the presence of a revolutionary new bra, standing on her desk. In
the shots of John, he is emphatically shown waving and gesticulating with his stick.
One could say that each is confined to their own space: one masculine and the
other feminine. Ultimately, there are only three shots in which we can see John and
Midge together.

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 2/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens

As Wood explains in Hitchcock's Films Revisited, the scenes in which both

characters are present emphasise the misunderstandings in their attempt to
communicate. First, there is the scene in which Midge explains the revolutionary
bra on her desk to John with the words "You know about these things. You're a big
boy now".� In this scene, it becomes clear that Midge does not quite posses the
mystery and veiled eroticism to seduce John. In addition, she treats him as a
mother. This is indicated earlier on in the conversation, when John tells her "Don't
be so motherly". The second scene in which they appear together in one shot is the
one in which John suggests he might try and overcome his vertigo by first learning
to climb a small stepladder again. Midge encourages him by actually getting the
ladder for him, like a mother, trying to give confidence to her child, while at the
same time warning him to be careful and to take it easy. When John is standing on
top of the small steps, he accidentally glances out of the window of the apartment
building. Overcome with dizziness, he falls straight into Midges arms. In this last
shot in which John and Midge are seen together, her embrace is clearly that of a
concerned and caring mother. The montage of this part of the film in fact already
tells us something about the theme of the film, the impossible relation between
man and woman, or at least between John and a woman.

In the course of the film, it becomes clear that Midge is seriously interested in
John, but she is not endowed with the mysticism that makes Madeline so attractive
to John. First of all, Midge is far too independent for John. Secondly, she overtly
takes on a motherly role towards John. This is emphasised especially in her last
appearance in the film, when she visits him at the hospital where he is taken in
after his nervous breakdown following Madeline's suicide. Comfortingly, she tells
him "Mother is here", but John does not react. Deeply disappointed Midge walks
out of the hospital and out of the story. If John is not attracted to Midge because
she so overtly takes on the role of his mother, this may be due to the fact that this
kind of relationship reminds him too much of his dependence.

3. Male identity
John's first words in this film are that he will be at liberty tomorrow - liberated
from his corset, that is. Throughout the film, the words "freedom" and "power" are
used in relation to each other and they return several times, each time with
reference to the power and freedom of men, more specifically even, the power and
freedom of men to dispose of their wives whenever it suits them. (Wood: 380) This
ancient male privilege is confirmed by the owner of the bookstore, consulted by
John on his search for Carlotta Valdes, the great-grandmother with whom Madeline
is obsessed. Carlotta was picked up from a cabaret by a wealthy man, who later on

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 3/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
dumped her mercilessly and took her child away from her. The bookseller's
comment is: "Men had the power and the freedom in those days". There are
several indications that John desperately tries to conform to this image of potent
masculinity. This is perhaps most clear at the very end of the movie, when John
jeers at Judy for her na�ve involvement with Elster. He ridicules her by suggesting
that Elster probably dumped her after the murder "with all that money and that
freedom and that power". But then, John's identity and masculinity are by no
means as stable as he would wish them to be, as the variety of nicknames he
receives throughout the film suggests. (Wood: 383) People not only call him John,
but also Scottie. Midge calls him Johnny-o and John-o. He also refers to himself as
"available Ferguson". In addition, the handicap of his vertigo not just makes him
unfit for his job, it prevents him from rescuing the woman of his dreams.

Holding this thought, let us return to the chronology of the film. After the
conversation in Midge's apartment, in which we have learned that John has been
invited by an old friend from university, the story shifts to Elster's office. Elster
turns out to have married his way into "the shipbuilding-industry". In this
sequence, references to freedom and power are again emphatically related to male
identity. We see John admiring a painting of San Francisco in "the good old days"
while Elster is telling him about the power and freedom of men in those days.
About halfway through this remark, the camera switches from John in front of the
painting to Elster in front of the window of his office, overlooking an impressive
shipyard. Thus, a stark contrast between the wealthy and powerful Elster and the
unemployed and handicapped John Ferguson is installed. The conversation swiftly
moves on to Elster's wife Madeline. Elster is worried that someone might hurt her.
When John asks who this might be, Elster ominously answers "Someone dead".
Although John reacts sceptically at first, he is eventually persuaded to follow
Madeline for a while in order to learn more about her daily routine. Eventually John
consents and the film cuts to Ernie's, the restaurant where John will see Madeline
for the very first time.

4. Woman as an object of art

What is striking about the scene of John's first encounter with Madeline is the way
in which she is presented to the audience and to John: by means of an explicit
profile, which makes her appear like a work of art. Later on, the profile shot will
gain significance, when it is explicitly related to Carlotta Valdes' portrait in the
museum that Madeline visits during her vagaries. The equation of Madeline to a
work of art also reveals her true nature. As a work of art Madeline is on the one

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 4/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
hand easily accessible, because she is passive and an object of the male gaze, on
the other hand, she is completely inaccessible as a human being. (Wood: 384) One
cannot have a love affair with a work of art, unless a very perverse one. Thus
presented, our first encounter with Madeline may already lead to the conclusion
that one side of the story is missing. But this is something John is too blind to see.

The next day, so we presume, John follows Madeline. Gradually, the ominous
undertones of their encounter come to the fore. Madeline is followed into all sorts
of dark places, a back alley behind a flower shop where she buys roses, a
graveyard, a dim museum, and an old hotel. In the museum John's fascination for
Madeline begins to take shape. We see him spying on her sitting in front of a
painting of Carlotta Valdes. The camera zooms in on the bundle of roses she has
laid beside her on the bench, and subsequently on the bouquet that Carlotta Valdes
is holding in the painting. This is repeated by a zoom-in on Madeline's hairstyle
followed by a zoom-in on Carlotta's hairstyle. By focussing on these details, the
women slowly start to merge into one figure. The effect of the zoom-in is that the
details are overdetermined for John, thus representing his blindness. For the
perceptive viewer, this scene again marks Madeline's appearance as a work of art
and it reveals something of her artificiality.

During the following days, John keeps following Madeline and reports to her
husband Elster, who confirms that Carlota Valdes was Madeline's great-
grandmother and that the hotel used to be Carlotta's home. This only adds to
John's fascination. Madeline keeps on leading John to dark places, and it is striking
that she often does this by driving downhill, which cannot be a good sign. An
important change takes place when John follows Madeline to San Francisco Bay
where she jumps into the river. John jumps after her and rescues her from
drowning, after which the sequence cuts to John's apartment. Madeline is asleep in
bed. A shot of her clothes hanging to dry in the kitchen suggest that John has
undressed and dried her before putting her to bed.

This scene is very suggestive and certainly not only for the audience. Also for John
this must have been a very erotic moment. This is the closest he will ever get to
the object of his desire without breaking the illusion of perfection. When Madeline
wakes up, John pours her a cup of coffee and asks her if she remembers what
happened. Of course, she does not. While pouring a second cup of coffee, he
cannot resist caressing her hand. For the viewer, it is clear: John is hopelessly lost.

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 5/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens

His jump into San Francisco Bay was more than just a jump into the icy water. The
next day John follows Madeline once more, but this time she leads him to his own
house, where they confront each other. After their meeting in front of the house,
they drive off together. John and Madeline get more and more intimate with each
other, which eventually leads to a very dramatic kiss that very same afternoon. As
one would expect, violins dominate the soundtrack while behind them we can see
waves breaking on the cliffs. John's surrender to the woman of his dreams is
complete.

The question is, why is John so fascinated with Madeline. What is it that makes her
so utterly irresistible to him? First of all, she is a very attractive woman, more
important however, is that she is surrounded with mystery. This mystery has
everything to do with her suicidal tendencies or, in other words, her death drive.

5. Lacan and the Thing

In his analysis of Vertigo, Slavoj Zizek refers to Lacan's theory that sublimation has
to do with death, rather than with de-sexualization as is more commonly assumed.
(Zizek: 83) When something is sublimated, as a consequence, the object starts to
function as "the Thing" within the economy of the spectator-subject. Considering
the abundance of subjective shots in Vertigo, the subject of the gaze is obviously
John Ferguson. The object of his gaze is Madeline, who will take the place of the
sublimated Thing in this story.

According to Lacan, as Zizek explains in Looking Awry,� the human drives

determine the way in which people generate their everyday relation to the world.
Desire and the object of desire determine the subject's view of the world. However,
the relation of the subject to the object of desire is by nature unfulfilled. The object
of desire can never be attained. At birth, the infant is unaware of the boundaries
between itself and the others. It is convinced that the mother's breast will always
be there at its disposal. A difficult but unavoidable task for the growing child is to
learn to accept that the world does not function like that. In fact, every desire is a
constant longing to return to this primary state of instant gratification of all desires
by the mother's breast. During the development from infancy to adulthood, this
desire is contained as a constitutive moment within a complex system of
meanings, i.e., the Symbolic Order. The Symbolic Order represents the system of
meanings that people create to make sense of everyday reality. Following Lacan,
the object of desire holds a special position within this Symbolic Order. Since we
are dealing with a desire that cannot be fulfilled, with an unattainable, or better
still, a non-existing object (even the ever-present breast of the mother was always
already an illusion), the object-of-desire constitutes a gap between the reality of

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 6/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
desire and reality as an everyday experience. This gap becomes the place for
fantasy. This fantasy is in fact the place of the Thing. The Thing is thus in fact the
object-of-desire, but at the same time it is nothing, because it is nothing more
than an impossible fantasy. In Vertigo, Madeline will occupy the place of the Thing
in John's perception of the world. She is his object-of-desire. In Zizek's words, she
is "materialized Nothingness". (Zizek: 83) She will not cease to fascinate until John
realises that her essence is one of non-existence. This is the point the film will lead
to when John discovers that Judy is in fact Madeline. But let's not run ahead of
things.

6. The woman who doesn't exist

So far our question has been: why is Madeline so fascinating? Part of the answer
lies in John's identification with Madeline. When John hears about her existence for
the first time, when Elster talks about his wife in his office, her identity is
presented as somehow dubious. For instance, Elster wonders: "Suddenly I don't
know her. She is no longer my wife." As I have pointed out above, John himself
answers to various names. His identity can also be regarded as doubtful. Moreover,
the fact that Madeline wanders is emphasised, this is also John's main occupation
since he left the police force. He just hangs around. This leads to a first
identification, which becomes total when John is captivated by Madeline's suicide
attempt. When John and Madeline go for a walk in the woods the day after she
jumped into the bay, he ardently asks her "What was it that made you jump?"
Initially, it seems as if he is only trying to help Madeline, by trying to rationalise
her nightmares and fears, but his concern soon turns out to be tainted with
interest of a different nature. "What may you jump?", he insists. In this helpful
curiosity lies a link with John's vertigo. What was it in that alluring depth that for a
second tempted him to let go? John hopes to find an answer to his own question in
Madeline.

Still, John and Madeline are not completely identical. The becomes clear when John
takes his beloved to San Juan Baptista. He does this because he believes that there
is a rational explanation for everything, including his own question. However, when
Madeline untangles herself from his embrace and runs to the church in order to
jump off the tower, the difference between the two lovers becomes painfully clear.
Madeline jumps no matter what, she is pure death drive. As for John, his fear of
death is still as great or greater than his death drive, which prevents him from
following her all the way to the top. According to Zizek, this may be explained by
the fact that she is, unlike John, nothing more than "materialized Nothingness".
(Zizek: 83)

This brings us to another piece of Lacanian theory, the idea that Woman does not
exist. Woman is but a symptom of man as subject. The fact that Woman as an
ideal object does not exist makes her one with the Thing, the fantasy and the non-
existent object-of-desire. As a result, Woman equals Nothingness. In Vertigo it
becomes painfully clear that Woman does not exist. This is the lesson that John will
have to learn in order to be cured from his vertigo.

7. Judy's inevitable destiny

After Madeline's suicide John completely collapses, to the point of hospitalisation.
When he is released from hospital it only takes a minute for the viewer to realise
that he is not over Madeline. Everywhere he goes, he sees women who look like
her and things that remind him of her. This is how he first notices Judy. He follows
her. Quite obtrusively, he introduces himself to her and insists that she will have
dinner with him. She consents eventually and when John leaves the room, the
viewer for the first time sees the story from a different perspective. In a flashback

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 7/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
we find out that Elster murdered his wife and that Judy really is the woman John
fell in love with. Knowing John could never make it to the top of the bell tower,
because of his vertigo, Elster threw his dead wife's body from the tower. John
became the perfect witness for Madeline's staged suicide and consequently Elster's
perfect alibi. We see Judy writing a letter to John explaining everything, including
that she has unintentionally fallen in love with him. Suddenly she tears up the
letter and decides to go out with John anyway, probably hoping that he will
eventually fall in love with her real self.

John's obsession with Madeline is daunting. Judy consents to an affair with John,
but soon John demands her to dress like the late Madeline. He even makes her
change the colour of her hair. "It couldn't matter to you", he says. This confirms
the idea that the ideal Woman does not have a will of her own. After all, as the
object-of-desire she will take the subject back to the paradisiacal� state of
immediate gratification of all desires at the mother's breast. A will of her own,
personal desires and wishes do not quite fit into this ideal state of being. As an
object-of-desire Woman becomes pure object. She is completely subordinated to
the male gaze.

Apparently Judy is hopelessly in love, since she eventually gives in to all of John's
bizarre wishes. After her complete transformation into Madeline, we may start to
wonder how much of Judy already was in Madeline and vice versa. Are we dealing
with one or two women? In order to be able to be either Judy or Madeline, there
already had to be something of either woman in both these appearances. Bearing
this in mind, the phrase "I have my face on", expressed by Judy, who has now
turned into Madeline, to her mirror image on the first night that she will go out
with John for the first time in her new guise, becomes highly ambiguous. Which
one is the mask? Judy or Madeline? This brings us to a phenomenon that,
according to Zizek (1991), returns in many of Hitchcock's films. Very often
Hitchcock uses the following formula: at first one pretends to be something, but
eventually one will find out that one really is the thing one only pretended to be at
first. Most often this concerns a couple that pretends to be in love, but eventually
will have to confess to really being in love. This formula will have a similar effect in
Vertigo. In the first half of the movie Judy pretends to be Madeline, while in the
second half John pretends that Judy is Madeline. Does this not mean that Judy was
Madeline? Can we blame John for reducing Judy to the non-existing Woman, thus
in fact sealing her fate? To what extent does Judy conform to her role of Woman
and does she have an alternative to conformation? The answer to this question
must be negative, unless one of the lovers abandons the relationship.

The moment Judy puts on a certain necklace, John suddenly realises that he has
been fooled. Cinematically, this is supported by reverse movement of the zoom-in
on Carlotta Valdes' portrait during an earlier visit to the museum. On a literal level,
the move is an illustration of John's sudden repulsion toward the woman in front of
him. (Wood: 388) Moreover, one could interpret this zoom-out as John's renewed
control over the whole picture, rather than being obsessed with details, which were
so overdetermined that they obscured his view. Now John realises that his sublime
Madeline has never existed, he takes Judy to San Juan Baptista. What follows
might as well be the most ominous sequence in the film. We see Judy sitting next
to John in the car, how she looks up to see the top of the trees beside the road
flash over her head. In fact, this sequence exactly repeats what we saw when John
drove Madeline to San Juan Baptista the day she jumped off the bell tower. At that
very moment Judy coincides with Madeline and her destiny is inevitable. As soon as
she exposed in the bell tower as the Woman who does not exist, when John points
out she is a fraud, Judy/Madeline breaks down completely. At this precise moment
John is miraculously cured of his vertigo. As soon as he realises that his fascination

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 8/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
was directed at something that was really nothing at all, except his own downfall,
he rejects the object of his fascination and finds himself cured.

Judy's panic attack in the bell tower is a perfect illustration of what Zizek calls the
breakdown of the femme fatale in film noir. In film noir there is always a woman
who will lure the male hero toward his defeat and who thus represents pure death
drive. Her exposure is always marked by an instant of hysterical breakdown.
(Zizek: 65) In a split second, various emotions rapidly succeed, indicating the
cracks in the mask, the end of her power to fascinate, her exposure as non-
existence. This is also what happens to Judy, who through the disclosure
completely coincides with Madeline. When John confronts her, she panics. She tries
to convince him once more that she really loves him, but when the dark shadow of
the nun appears in the back, she is already so desperate that she jumps off the
tower, towards her destiny, exposed as pure death drive. This denouement finally
makes it clear that Woman, as we now know, does not exist. However, this
revelation also entails that relationships with ordinary everyday women are
impossible. Something Midge already realised in the first half of the story. The last
shot shows us John standing on the edge of the tower. Without dizzy spells, he can
now bear witness to the gap in his realty and look down into the depth below.

8. Distorted sight and the true nature of the

uncanny
This finale brings us to a theme of the story, which is not merely situated on the
level of the story, but also on the level of form and montage. This will also turn out
to be the level on which the uncanny in Vertigo must be situated. But before we
get into this we will first take a look at Todorov's theory on the fantastic. Todorov
states that a story belongs to the genre of the fantastic if the story manages to
raise doubt in both the characters and the reader, or in the mind of the reader
alone. In any case, the reader has to be challenged to doubt the true nature of the
events he is reading about. Is what is happening real or just an illusion? Depending
on the answer to this question a fantastic story will eventually always yield to
either the genre of the uncanny� or to the genre of the marvellous. [1] A story will
belong to the genre of the uncanny if a rational explanation is offered for the
fantastic events in the story. This kind of story will eventually just seem strange,
unlikely or even a bit silly. On the other hand, a story may lapse into "the
marvellous" when fantastic events are accepted as extraordinary and turn out to
belong to the category of the supernatural. This entails that in this story the
parameters of the normal are adjusted to account for the fantastic events. Only
rarely, a story will be able to suspend the initial doubt in the readers' mind
indefinitely. Eventually, it will always opt for one of the two solutions, either the
uncanny, or the marvellous. In the case of Hitchcock's Vertigo the answer would
almost certainly lead to the category of the fantastic-uncanny. First for the viewer
and later for John Ferguson. The spectator is released from his feeling of doubt
earlier, because he witnesses Judy's flashback halfway through the film.

Todorov goes even further when he analyses the doubt evoked by a fantastic story.
What happens to a reader and/or character who finds out that he or she was
dealing with an event that was (merely) uncanny. According to Todorov the
transition from the fantastic to the uncanny is always accompanied by the
realisation that one was suffering from distorted sight. Either one experienced a
mirage, an illusion, a fit of madness or an illness, or one was simply tricked by
others. This last solution seems also to be the answer to John's problem in Vertigo.
He was deceived by Elster and Judy and blinded by his love for Madeline. His
blindness can be illustrated by many of the things we already said above
concerning Madeline's presentation as a work of art and, more importantly, by the

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 9/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
fact that from the very beginning, the audience's perspective has mostly been
limited to John's perspective. The first half of the film consists of a sheer endless
series of subjective shots, in which we only get to see what John sees. Quite
suddenly, halfway through the film we are confronted with Judy's flashback. This
may be called a revelation as well as a release from John's narrow, subjective point
of view. After the flashback most of what we get to see is again defined by John's
point of view, but because the spectator is now very much aware of the other side
of the story, the obtrusiveness of his gaze becomes very obvious. This is paralleled
in the story by John's attempt to transform Judy into Madeline against her will. He
actually imposes his gaze on her. When at the end of the story Judy completely
coincides with Madeline, as becomes clear when they are driving to San Juan
Baptista, something else is going on as well.

Apparently John's gaze proves to be so tyrannical that he brings out the Madeline
in Judy, which will lead to her death. When John realises that the object-of-his-
desire was looking back at him all along and that she was only a real woman, a
human being of flesh and blood, he gets furious. In reality, while John thought that
he was shadowing Madeline, Judy had been in charge all the time. As a matter of
fact, she was leading him everywhere and made him follow her.� While he thought
he was the agent in this story, he now comprehends that he was only a passive
pawn in someone else's game. This is an insult to his identity as a male. An
identity he associates with freedom and power, as we illustrated extensively above.
This insult is the main reason for his anger in the bell tower at San Juan Baptista.
It also explains why John tries to make a fool of Judy by pointing out to her that
Elster probably dumped her "with all that power and that money and that freedom"
when he didn't need her anymore. However, he also admits "I really loved you
Madeline" to which she answers that she loves him too. But, as he tells her,�
"there's no bringing it back", because to him this is not Madeline's answer but
Judy's. He rejects the ordinary, but real Judy. She can never be the sublime
Woman that Madeline was in his eyes. Judy can be nothing more than the
unmasked "Nothingness" we encountered in Zizek's theories.

Judy's transformation into Madeline by John not only solved a murder mystery, but
also undermined his illusion of the possibility of an ideal Woman. From the outside
this woman in front of him may look like the real thing, but knowing that he is
really looking at the much coarser Judy makes him reject her anyway. It was
John's gaze that made him believe in an ideal Woman in the first place, but now
that same gaze confronts him with the hollowness of this illusion. He is confronted
with the shortcoming of his own gaze. This disillusionment leaves no room for Judy
who in the guise of Madeline jumps off the bell tower as unmasked Nothingness. In
John's blindness and in the possible tyranny of someone's gaze over another
person we encounter the truly uncanny moment of Vertigo.

Bibliography
Hitchcock, Alfred. 1958. Vertigo. Universal.

Todorov, Todorov. 1987.The Fantastic. A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre.

Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Wood, Robin. 1989. Hitchcock's Films Revisited. New York: Columbia UP.

Zizek, S. 1991. Looking Awry. An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular

Culture. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

[1] "Uncanny" is the translation of "étrange" and should not be confused with
"unheimlich", as it has been used thus far in the article. Both terms will be

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 10/11

10/19/23, 2:31 AM Vertigo. A vertiginous gap in reality and a woman who doesn't exist by Joyce Huntjens
compared here, but they do not coincide.

This site is optimized for Netscape 6 and higher

site design: Sara Roegiers @ Maerlantcentrum

https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/joycehuntjens.htm#:~:text=In his analysis of Vertigo,economy of the spectator-subject. 11/11