Vertigo Analysis

In Laura Mulvey’s  “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” she states that ‘Hollywood narrative films usually use women in order to provide a pleasurable visual experience for men’ This is proven to be true in Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’. As soon as we see the two main characters Scottie and Madeleine, we are shown through various microelements how the character of Scottie is completely fascinated with Madeleine. We are always shown Madeleine through his point of view, which means we are forced to adapt to his perspective, therefore we view her as he does. The camera first shown her bare back, and slowly zooms into her, emphasising her body, which proves Mulvey’s point of women being used for visual pleasure only. When the camera zooms in, we are literally pulled into her.