Vertigo notes

1. QUESTION: Using your notes below and your notes from your thriller
seminars, analyse how Vertigo conforms to our expectations of thriller codes
and conventions.
EDITING
- match on action
- jump cut
CAMERA SHOTS/ANGLES/MOVEMENT
- close up
- starts with a chase sequence at night - dark
- birds eye view
- the vertigo effect or Hitchcock effect , push in and push out, this was the first time
this was used in this genre, to convey perspective
- high angle shots when he looks at her
- establishing shot after he faints
- two shot in the office
- low angle shot when talking about danger coming to his wife
- tracking shot (inwards)
- establishing shot
- tilt, when looking at all the apartment windows
- establishing shot across the courtyard
- POV shot when looking out the car windscreen
- low angle shot in the graveyard
- lots of low angle shots of scotty
- tracking shots of scotty walking
- voyeurism (watching, being a ‘peeping tom’)
- low angle shot of scotty at the top of the tower shows his dominance, vice versa -
high angle shot of her shows her weakness
SOUND
- unsettling score in the opening credit sequence
- diegetic sound, the violin in the background, then asked to be turned off
- non-diegetic sound comes in in the restaurant scene
- more unsettling score hinting at mystery
- non-diegetic sound and diegetic sound of footsteps and door opening
- As he, Scotty, becomes more obsessed with madeline the music becomes more
eerie
- dramatic score at the end of the movie
THEMES & MOTIFS
- marriage - college engagement
- quitting the police force due to his agoraphobia and vertigo
- visits a graveyard
- voyeurism (watching, being a ‘peeping tom’)

2. - Twisted stairs = twisted mind, when he’s climbing up the tower
- slow pleasant score used to calm to mood and show a
SYMBOLIC CODES (including enigma and binary opposites)
- visual metaphors to represent twisted minds
- flowers contrast with her grey suit in the flower store
IDEOLOGY
- when she kisses scotty at the end she is using her love against him trying to
manipulate him
LIGHTING
- dark lighting at night, mystery
- lots of red colour
- soft lighting is used around madeline’s face and sharp/harder lighting is used
around Scotty’s face
- saturated in the restaurant
- desaturated when scotty is following madeline
- low key lighting
- chiaroscuro lighting used (mixture between light and dark - direct contrast) key
convention in thriller films
- chiaroscuro lighting then contrasts to high key lighting in the flower shop
- back to natural light when he leaves the room where he is looking at madeline in
the flower shop,he goes back outside
- natural lighting in the graveyard
- the higher they go in the tower the darker it gets - low key lighting
NARRATIVE
- starting with non-linear narrative
- the higher they go in the tower the darker it gets
CHARACTERS
- main character (scotty) has a agoraphobia/ vertigo
- relationship with Midge, used to be engaged in college
- madeline (the guys wife who he is supposed to follow) is introduced, she is the
woman scotty becomes obsessed with, her clothes are green, contrasting to the
red background
- the grave belongs to Carlotta Valdes
- scotty is full of internal conflict
- Julie looks like Madeline to Scotty, begets a de ja vuz sensation when he sees
Julie, because julie is madeline

3. SETTING & MISE-EN-SCENE
- set in San Francisco
- by water, up and down hills, famous signs and wide streets