Vertigo: Trapped in the Cycle

WARNING:  Spoilers Ahead!!

       Vertigo has been considered by many as one of the greatest and most important films ever made. In many ways I consider it to be Alfred Hitchcock's most complex, and layered film as it explores the darkest part of the human condition by exploring how obsession can trap someone into a mental cycle that has to be broken to overcome out personal struggles. The film explores this with symbolism, color composition, and a haunting, memorable score.

We follow John Ferguson (played by the always-great Jimmy Stewart) aka "Scottie" a detective who has a traumatizing event when he witnesses a cop attempting to save him during a rooftop pursuit of a criminal. The cop fails and Scottie witnesses the him fall to his death. Scottie is struck with serious vertigo, which is the fear of unbalance during great heights. He is hired by an old friend of his named Galvin Elster (Tom Helmore) to follow his wife, Judy Barton (played by Kim Novak) believing some sort of spirit from the past has possessed her. 

Throughout the film as he follows Judy, their relationship begins to deepen in a disturbing way, as Judy convinces Scottie of the severity of the possessed spirit. This leads to the pivotal part of the film when Judy jumps off a bell tower and supposedly kills herself. This brutally hinder's Scottie's mind to the point of him checking into an institution due to his heavy regret for not saving her due to his vertigo.

The second half of the film finds Scottie encountering someone that looks like Judy, and long story short, she was never Judy. We learn Galvin used her as a decoy to take advantage of Scottie's vertigo so he could get away with murdering his wife. The film at this point does something incredibly clever and surreal:

We watch Scottie and Judy's strange relationship unfold leading to the midpoint of "Judy" killing herself. The film then retreads the same story but from a different angle. Scottie's obsessive control over who he believes to be Judy caused him to be trapped in the exact same cycle as when he first met her. His traumatic experience leads him to recreate the woman he obsessively fell for even after death. Judy herself, who's not Judy, wants to desperately escape this same event but is wrapped back into it, replaying her sick role of false identity she was trying to get away from.

By the third act of the film, the plot circles itself back around to where the end of the first half took place: the bell tower. Scottie begins putting the pieces together of both their parts in Galvin's plan. "Not Judy" falls off the bell tower and dies. The ending is both haunting and emotionally satisfying, but it shows how great a measure was needed to break the cycle Scottie and even "Not Judy" herself were trapped in. And in a way, there would be no other way to end this mental and emotional imprisonment. The cycle needed to end, and even if it resulted in death. This was also the only way for Scottie to overcome his Vertigo, or he'd be stuck in this fear-like state for the rest of his life, unable to move forward in his life.

I'd also like to add that his relationship with Judy when she was  "possessed by a dead woman", mirrors in the second act when in a sense she played the role of a spirit of a dead women once again, and Scottie recreating her from the dead.

Hitchcock has created what he considers his"most personal film" yet. It's also his most psychological film that improves with every viewing.

What did you think of the film or it's themes? Leave a comment below!