Vertigo - Robin Wood

Wood goes into detail describing his opinion that the film is a masterpiece, regardless of its derision by critics & his readers. He also describes the film's origin as a novel (D'Entre les Morts) and its similarities to both the book and film from the same writer, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, Les Diaboliques. They both feature what Wood calls 'alienation effects' contrary to the events of their respective books, surprising the audience with a "brilliant" plot twist which alters our perception of the events before it. He also says that Hitchcock displays "lordly indifference" in not allowing the audience to find out whether or not the murderer gets caught.

Wood's counter-argument to those who say the film hinges on immense probability, that a man who has seen his lover fall to her death would not stay to see if she had in fact died, misunderstand the film and aren't aware that, actually, the entire plot is purposefully fantastic, like Shakespeare. The plot, characterisation and psychology among others are 'subordinate' to thematic development. He cites a major difference in vertigo's translation to both America and the screen. Wood says the novel is pessimistic and invites the reader to look down on its characters, but in the film Hitchcock presents them as 'acceptable representatives of the human condition' whom we regard with sympathetic concern for all their flaws and limitations. However, he says, that Vertigo is superior to a poor book doesn't justify his claims, and he begins his analysis, describing the film as conveniently structured into a brief prologue and three acts or 'movements'.

The opening credits sequence is the first time we are given an aspect of the film's themes, that of transformation and anxiety. The face we see is described by Wood as exhibiting 'imprisoned unknown emotions, fears, desperation'. The music links this sequence to a later scene in the beauty salon as Judy becomes Madeleine again, as she becomes 'a mask'.