Title Sequence Of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo

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Vertigo opens with an amazingly haunting piece of music that puts the viewer in the right frame of mind for what is to come. Similar to the film, this title sequence is meant to distort our reality: in zooming in on different body parts of the female at the beginning, one loses the sense of the big picture (e.g. her body in general); through the swirls present throughout the rest of the music, the viewer loses his or her sense of direction and focus. Just as expressionism is meant to distort reality to the point of evoking a certain emotion or mood in the viewer, this opening to Vertigo alters our sense of realism just enough to bring us into a feeling of vertigo ourselves. In other words, the director uses this sequence to put us into Scottie’s…show more content…
The woman at the beginning tells the viewer (subconsciously) that the plot will be based around a female—perhaps with something to hide based upon the way her eyes dart around. The second clue as to what will occur is understood when “swirls” start to emerge, beginning in this anonymous woman’s pupils. Unbeknownst to the viewer, Hitchcock is actually being very suspenseful in this title sequence. Subconsciously, we know something twisted is going to happen involving a woman, even if we don’t recognize this idea on the surface of our understanding. Both the music and the images are trying to tell us something—trying to tell us that what’s about to happen is going to be pretty tangled and messy. Alfred Hitchcock is the absolute master of suspense, even if we don’t realize…show more content…
At the most basic of levels, the actual set itself is an interpretation of expressionism. One of the most popular signs of this within the film is articulated through the use of the staircase: because of Scottie’s acrophobia, staircases are always distorted. As if in a dreamlike reality, each staircase represents an obstacle that John must conquer. In a final show of expressionism, once he finally overcomes his fear of the staircase in the concluding scene the whole “spell” of Judy and everything she symbolizes is broken. Similarly, Hitchcock plays with the idea of color throughout the film, using it to depict certain emotions such as making Judy quite literally green with envy or even using the color red to tell the viewer that something bad is about to happen. Even further, it seems as if the entire movie is illustrated in a surreal quality. In other words, everything is depicted as a distorted reality; it becomes an illusion of sorts. Nothing is beautiful in the traditional sense of the word. Even after Judy is “made beautiful” by Scottie, her beauty is not real—it is simply a representation of his obsession with Madeleine. Fundamentally, Vertigo is an embodiment of irrational fears. Hitchcock essentially ensures that the viewer is lost in the plot simply through focusing all of
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