VERTIGO STACK002

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The vertigo in question here has nothing to do with a fall through
space. It is an obvious metaphor, palpable and spectacular, for another
form of vertigo, much more difficult to represent, which is the vertigo of
Time. Elster’s « perfect crime » is almost perfect enough to achieve the
impossible: to reinvent a time when men, women, and San Fransisco
were other than they are today. And as always Hitchcock, this perfection
will be fulfilled through twinning. Scottie will take on the madness of time
transfused to him by Elster through Madeleine/Judy; but where the first
restricted his fantasy to mediocre images -wealth, power, etc.- the
honest Scottie will transpose the vertigo to the summit of human utopia:
vanquishing Time where its wounds are at their most irreparable, bringing a
dead love to life again. And the entire second half of the film, the step
through the Mirror, is nothing but that, the insane, maniacal and terrifying
attempt to deny time, to recompose, with clothes, cosmetics, hairstyle
-signs as inconsequential and necessary as the figures of a liturgy -the
woman whose loss Scottie ultimately refuses to accept.