Vertigo - Mulvey's Theory

Mulvey states our world is ordered by sexual imbalance, her theory suggests both the audience and the male characters within film, take pleasure in gazing at the female characters. The characters who are 'to be looked at' (gazed at) are seen as the passive roles, and therefore under the control of the male gazer. As far as Vertigo goes this is definitely true. The scene whereby we are introduced to Midge, we are not presented with any POV shots of her, which straight away has implications that she is not somebody to be gazed at, more over we simply look at her in the scene. LINK to Hitch's Perfect woman.

This juxtaposed the introduction of Madeleine however. In the scene Ernies, we see a POV from Scottie of Madeleine, whereby we are encouraged to gaze at her immaculate beauty. We the audience, are fixated on Madeleine's beauty, as the camera tracks allowing us to get closer to her.

This scene is  a direct implication of Mulvey's theory, whereby both Scottie and the audience take pleasure in looking at Madeleine. Madeleine connotes 'to be looked at ness'; we see a shot of her walking through a door frame, which visually idealises her, such that the shot has connotations of both a painting perfection, but also Carlotta. We, as does Scottie, view Madeleine as an erotic object, something to be gazed at via a POV of the protagonist male. It is through this scene whereby Scottie's spiral of obsession begins, and through Hitchcock's techniques, the audience is complicit in the obsession also.

In a metaphorical sense, in the opening sequence Scottie is castrated, whereby he has been feminised through his lack of typical masculine traits. In order to cure his castration, Scottie attempts to do so by caring for Madeleine. Through this, Scottie represses all of his vice desires, and adopts a virtue approach to Madeleine. Scottie see's the possession of Madeleine as a cure, however he ultimately fails in his attempts when Madeleine dies. It is the second half of the film, whereby Scottie adopts his vice desires on Judy, that Scottie becomes active within the film, and begins to restore his masculinity.