Vertigo - Opening Sequence/Scene Analysis

The opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo prepares the audience to immediately view women in the film as passive, as well as representing the film's foremost themes of obsession, identity and the fetishisation of women. In this opening sequence we are presented parts of a woman, suggested to be the film's heroine Madeleine, and never the whole person. This is all presented in extreme close-up, producing a sense of entrapment for this woman, something which still rings true throughout Vertigo, something which would produce a much different tone if shot in a wide-angle or medium close-up. By introducing the character through her body parts, such as her cheek, lips, eyes and nose, Hitchcock is fetishising and objectifying Madeleine, making her into an object with several different controllable parts for which the director can manipulate and the spectator can gaze at. In this sense, Vertigo's opening sequence is both voyeuristic and scopophilic for the spectator to receive sexual pleasure from gazing at an attractive woman without her knowledge or permission.