Cold sweats

Cold sweats , often better known under its original title Vertigo , is a American film carried out in 1958 by Alfred Hitchcock. He is regarded as film more succeeded of the realizer and is particularly appreciated film enthusiasts.

Synopsis

With San Francisco, Scottie is a man who does not support altitude and often has crises of giddiness (English title of film), very awkward in his function of police officer. After the death of one of his/her colleagues, accident which starts his Acrophobie, it leaves the police force. One of its knowledge contacts it in order to follow his wife, who he claims had by his grandmother, Carlotta Valdes. Initially reticent, Scottie ends up accepting. After long scenes where it spins the young woman, it even realizes by him as there is a share of truth in what his/her friend of childhood said. When Madeleine, the young woman, tries to commit suicide while throwing herself in bay of San Francisco, it saves it in extremis drowning and brings back it at his place. It makes its knowledge and is fascinated more and more by the soft madness which pushed it to try to commit suicide. They fall in love one with the other, but Madeleine is the victim of a new crisis of madness, and throws top of the tower of a church; Scottie, embanked by its acrophobie, could not follow it and save it.

After more than one year of depression and dumbness, it starts to turn over in the streets, the places which it knew with Madeleine. He believes to see it everywhere but he is disappointed. With the turning of a street, it meets Judy, as brown as Madeleine was fair, but with however same the features, the Sosie of missing. After having followed it, stupefied, it approaches it and they end up leaving together. It colors the hair into fair to him, buys the tailor to him whom the late one carried, in short, it reorganizes it in order to transform it into Madeleine. Judy, which realizes there is desperate, but is let make because she likes it. Scottie ends up becoming insane when it includes/understands, by discovering a jewel having belonged to Madeleine at Judy, of which horrible machination it was the victim…

Elements of analysis

Technique with the service of the setting in scene

To illustrate the scenes of giddiness, Alfred Hitchcock uses the subjective Caméra, but in a particular way: whereas he films, to the bottom, the depth of the stair-well that James Stewart is supposed to see with anguish, the camera makes two simultaneous movements: a movement of apparatus backwards (back dolly) and an optical movement forwards (front zoom). The result of this technical artifice called Travelling compensated for, used here for the first time in a film, is an image which becomes deformed, as if the stair-well lengthened. An error slipped into film: at the end, when Scottie and Judy go towards the Spanish mission, the car runs on the left.

Giddiness and sexuality

In the novel of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, Among deaths , the main character is impotent. The authors explicitly write, as of the first chapter, that it forever known of woman whereas it has more than 30 years. In the film adaptation Alfred Hitchcock has fun to multiply the ironic winks on the sexuality of Scottie, incarnated by James Stewart. Thus as of the second scene, an interminable dialog in the apartment of Midge, it plays with a cane while Midge refers to their short engagement broken because it occurred anything. It points it even towards a bra because Midge works in the manufacture of female linen room, which contributes to érotiser even more the scene. This cane is thus a substitute of its sex of which it can only make in the presence of a woman who wants to like it charnellement. Midge speaks to him as with a child " you are has big servant boy now ! ". At the end of the sequence Scottie tries to fight against the giddiness while climbing gradually on a stool. Hitchcock shows, in a very short plan, drawings of woman to the foot of the steps. It is an attempt at erection which is thus suggested. She ends in a fiasco in the arms of Midge, eternal dissatisfied.

The irony reaches its roof by the use of the Coit tower (such a name is not invented) well-known by all the inhabitants of San Francisco and of which erection (if! if!) was financed by a lady which was called Lillie Hitchcock Coit (no bond of family with Sir Alfred!). The tower, obvious phallic symbol, represents a fire hose because Lillie wanted to pay homage to the firemen of the city. The tower appears constantly by the window of the apartment of Scottie like making fun of its lack of sexual strength. When Madeleine, after her suicide attempt, comes to thank it for having saved it, she says to him that she found her apartment thanks to her. Scottie answers that it is the first time that it is useful to him to something.

Some plans later they end up sleeping together, suggested and not shown scene. Scottie is then persuaded that it is a reincarnation and it is with a phantom, with a dead thus, that it has a relation. In the interview which it granted to François Truffaut, Hitchcock speaks about nécrophilie of the character. Scottie is convinced of the reincarnation of Carlotta after the splendid sequence in the forest of sequoias, trees sempervirens as it underlines it itself. In the following plan they embrace with the foot of a tortuous tree (symbol of the wavering sexuality of Scottie compared with strength insolente of the thousand-year-old trees) and the surge of the waves does not leave any doubt about the fact that they know each other with the biblical direction of the term.

Scottie Pygmalion

When Scottie discovers by chance in the street Judy, the double of its regretted Madeleine, it undertakes to transform it with the image of his disappeared love. He is unaware of that it is the same person and that he is victim of a diabolic machination. Once the finished transformation it likes it again. However Madeleine existed forever. It is thus in love with an image which it created itself. When he discovers the truth the jealousy submerges it and he causes the death of Judy. It is also a divine punishment, Hitchcock is very moral, because a nun contributes to cause the accident. The question which one can put they are the causes of the faintness of Scottie. Is it sick because ultimately it had relations with a woman of flesh and blood? Or is this of Elster which it is jealous? What Scottie did by creating Madeleine, Elster did it before him but without falling in love with its creation. Its goal machiavelic was that another succumbs to its charms and fall into its trap malefic.

Data sheet

  • Title: Cold sweats
  • original Title: Vertigo
  • Realization: Alfred Hitchcock
  • Scenario: Samuel A. Taylor, Alec Coppel, according to the novel Among deaths of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
  • Music: Bernard Herrmann
  • Coming out date (the United States): May 9th 1958
  • Date of new French exit: December 18th 2002
  • American Film
  • Format: Vistavision, 35 mm, 1:85.1 (colors, its mono or stereo in the copies in 70 mm and the DVD)
  • Kind: drama, police
  • Lasted: 129 minutes
  • Any public

Distribution

Around film

  • Caméo : To the 11th minute, Alfred Hitchcock passes in front of the gate of entry of the shipyard.
  • Hitchcock would have forced Kim Novak to make pretense drown whereas it knew that it could not swim, at the time of the scene in Presidio.

External bonds

  • Histoire of the tower Coit
  • Ebauche of analysis Extracts Appearance
  • The Coit Tower and the phantasm of Scottie
  • De Vertigo with Eyes Wide Shut
  • Vertigo in the light of Sylvie
  • Vertigo told by Kim Novak

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