MEMOIRE-STACK007

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THIS IS A MADELEINE

Among a hundred other themes, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo deals with the
extravagant quest to rediscover things past. That its heroine just happens to
be called Madeleine is the kind of fluke that connoisseurs can smile over,
without exaggerating its importance. But how many decisive turning-points in
our lives rest on even slimmer coincidences? This one is enough to enthrone
Alfred alongside Marcel, and to make him one of out guides on this journey
through memory. Vertigo is the story of a man who can no longer tolerate the
tyranny of memory: what has been, has been, and no one can change things
anymore. He wants to change things. He wants a dead woman to live again,
by way of appearances. He simply wants to triumph over time. It’s madness
perhaps, but madness that strikes a chord in us. No film has ever shown so
well that memory, if deranged, can be used for something quite different than
remembering: it can be used to reinvent life, and finally to vanquish death.

It’s banal to say that memory misleads, and more intriguing to see its lies as a
form of natural protection that one can govern and shape at will. Sometimes
that’s called art.