Vertigo

Vertigo

1. Critical Approaches - Narrative Theory

   • "Vertigo is implausible, full of plot holes and inconsistencies and cannot be taken seriously from a narrative realist perspective. "

2. Critical Approaches - Genre Theory

   • “Vertigo is best seen as a ghost story, a tale of haunting, with the detective story supplying little more than a plot mechanism”. - Peter Wollen (Sight and Sound, 1997)
     • “The distinction between suspense (the viewer knows the truth and – on behalf of the doomed victim – fears what is going to happen) and mystery (the viewer does not yet know the truth) is fundamental to Hitchcock’s approach to the thriller.”
   • “The concept of the Femme Fatale, central to hard-boiled detective and film-noir traditions on which Vertigo draws, is examined and undercut – the film is explicitly about how men, out of their own anxieties and for their own convenience, create mythic images of women.” - Martin Rubin (Cambridge, 1999)

3. Male Gaze; Gendered Look

   • “…stunning is the entrance of Kim Novak in Vertigo… Novak is female, passive, silent, offering herself as an object to the male gaze.” - Charles Barr (2002)
   • The Three-Way Look -