darkest villainy!!!

In Hitchcock’s films how does the villain function, and what is the nature of the villain’s character?

The villain is often one of the most interesting and memorable characters from film. Hitchcock’s villains are no exception, and are among some of the most memorable and terrifying in cinema. In Vertigo Hitchcock plays with perception and understanding of the villain and conversely, what constitutes a hero. Vertigo, the life of Detective John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson as he is drawn into a mystery surrounding his friend’s wife, Madeline. After discovering that he is afflicted by acrophobia during a terrifying brush with death, Scottie, now retired is asked by an old friend, Gavin Elster to follow his wife whom he claims has been possessed by the spirit of her suicidal great-grandmother. After rescuing her from nearly drowning, Scottie becomes infatuated by the woman and pursues her. While trying to figure out her melancholy and suicidal tendencies, they are drawn to a church called the Mission of San Juan Bautista. Here, unable to pursue Madeline as she climbs the bell tower because of his crippling vertigo, Scottie sees her fall to her death and is drawn into a deep depression for a year. When he recovers he sees reflections of Madeline wherever he looks, including a woman who bears a striking resemblance to her, whom he pursues fervently. It is later revealed that she was in fact an accomplice playing the part of Madeline whilst Gavin had murdered the real Madeline and staged the encounter with Scottie to cover his tracks. A now obsessed Scottie makes the woman, Judy, dress like Madeline as his obsession grows. He drags her against her will to the Mission to expose her fraud and to overcome his past, tragically it leads to her demise when they are disturbed at the top of the bell tower and she falls to her death, leaving Scottie cured of his vertigo, yet crippled by the repetition of the tragedy. In Vertigo, Hitchcock deliberately makes the nature of his villains ambiguous, disguised and misleading whilst presenting the culpability of the supposedly innocent and heroic characters in order to redefine the audiences preconceived notions about the nature of villainy.


Hitchcock’s construction and exploration of villainy is one of the most interesting and pivotal aspect to his film making. In Vertigo as in many of his other films, Hitchcock often turns the traditional conception of the villain on its head, prompting the audience reevaluate their notions of villainy and the potential for the corrupting power of evil in the seemingly most safe and banal places. In Vertigo the identity of the villain is as elusive as the mysterious Madeline. The audience learns eventually that the protagonist, Scottie has in fact been manipulated by his old friend, Gavin Elster, in a plot to dispose of his wife. One of the interesting aspects of Elster’s character is the nature of his screen relation to Scottie; the fact that they are old friends immediately lulls the audience into a false sense of security. After being introduced to the very human and vulnerable Scottie, Gavin seems to be a stronger and more respectable citizen; in the scene in Gavin’s office we learn of his undertaking the family business and associate the responsibility that perhaps we doubt in Scottie’s abilities with Gavin. In this way the audience is encouraged to believe in Gavin just as easily as Scottie. The elusive and obscure identity of the true villain is common theme in Hitchcock’s work; as in Psycho the audience is kept hidden from the true identity of the villain although having been introduced to them as seemingly harmless people. The nature of Gavin’s link to Scottie’s past is also a favorite theme of Hitchcock’s; the past having a constant and detrimental effect on the present, much like Scottie’s acrophobia that afflicts him so terribly.


As with Gavin or the range of Hitchcock’s villains, especially Norman Bates, the construction of villainy differs considerably from what might be considered a traditional portrayal; in classical Hollywood the villain is often garishly obvious, such as being a literal monster or being foreign. Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula might typify the traditional conceptions of villainy and evil, being visibly and characteristically evil. Hitchcock revels in playing with these traditional conceptions of evil. In Vertigo as in many of Hitchcock’s films the villain is the familiar and the unassuming face of the ordinary person, in this particular case he is an old friend of the protagonist which offsets the audience’s suspicions further.


Hitchcock playfully constructs a complicated relationship between the hero and the villain in Vertigo. We see in Vertigo that there is a thin line between the ordinary citizen and the potential for evil, that both the hero and the villain are equally ambiguous and interchangeable. Hitchcock hints throughout his oeuvre, that the potential for evil resides in everyone and complete innocence on any part is an impossibility. We see this in many ways in Vertigo, despite the fact that Scottie is supposedly the innocent protagonist the audience observes worrying traits of villainy in his demeanor throughout the film. In the restaurant scene at Ernie’s, the opening tracking shot establishes the scene as a point of view shot from Scottie’s perspective. We see Madeline starkly contrasted in emerald green against a deep red background, in which she is already internally framed by Hitchcock twice. The voyeuristic and sexualized nature of this scene calls into question the innocence and intentions of the character of Scottie. Although we have great sympathy for him as a result of his mild manner and harrowing past, the voyeuristic nature of the long gazing point of view shot implicates him (as well as the audience) as maybe not being as innocent as we first suppose, the fact that the audience shares this point of view shot implicates us as equally as Scottie, further complicating the malleable nature of fault and virtue in the mind of the audience. The point of view shots of Scottie following Madeline across the city only add to a growing suspicion of his kindly nature and imply a neurotic, stalker-esque personality trait in him which develops further as the story becomes more complicated and the distinctions between guilt and innocence disintegrate.


The comparison between the hero and the villain is further complicated and our understanding of the nature of innocence and guilt further manipulated by Hitchcock later in the film when we see the relationship develop between Judy and Scottie. Here the similarities between Scottie and Gavin become alarmingly apparent. We see Scottie manipulating Judy; his obsession with Madeline has grown to a point where he completely dominates the woman, reshaping her in the image that he desires with no consideration for her at all, just as Gavin has used her and trained her to be a surrogate Madeline, so does Scottie. Hitchcock establishes the two men as foils to illustrate the interchangeability of villainy and heroism. We see Scottie progressively becoming more like Gavin, but with traits of his own that we do see in the predominantly absent Gavin; Scottie is obsessive and neurotic, Hitchcock illustrates these most alarmingly tendencies in the tense last scene where Scottie drags the unwilling Judy to the top of the bell tower. The intense nauseating score serves here to bolster the decent into uncontrolled frenzy and paranoia, as Scottie roughly handles Judy and reduces her to a whimpering mass. The sweat, hysteria and spiraling Bernard Herrmann score as well as the famous reverse dolly camera shot that emphasizes the feeling of vertigo and nausea in this scene reflect the opening scene of Scottie clinging for life to the gutter of the building to intensely suspenseful effect. In the opening scene the audience is gripped by fear for Scottie, in the finale it is Judy that the audience’s sympathies lie with as the seemingly inevitable unfolds. She falls to her death as a result of his uncontrollable impulse to recreate and resolve past mistakes, and in doing so reenacts them. Scottie, like Gavin both construct their women for personal satisfaction and literally discard them when they have served their purpose, for Gavin it is financial gain, for Scottie personal and psychological healing.


The audience’s relation to the villain is equally important to Hitchcock’s filmmaking style. From the first scene in Gavin’s office the audience is manipulated by Hitchcock into sympathizing with him. He seems genuinely worried for his wife’s safety and desperate for his friend, Scottie, to help him. Hitchcock places the villain in a supposed position of vulnerability to garner audience sympathy for him, whilst simultaneously misleading suspicions about the villain.


Initially there is a degree of transference of villainy from the absent Gavin to Judy; being that she is an accomplice to his crime and she is the source of Scottie’s mental malaise and gradual decline. However Hitchcock is quick to establish her as a victim to diminish these feelings. In several scenes, she is shown as suffering at the hand of Scottie, forced by him, as by Gavin to alter her appearance. In the clothing store she is on the verge of tears, pleading with the obsessed Scottie to end his pursuit. This is typical of Hitchcock; to align the audience with the villain whilst exhibiting the hero as flawed and far from the innocent swashbuckling stereotype of heroism.

It is not until a substantial portion through the film that through Judy’s flashback that we learn he was a murderer and she in fact is the accomplice. However, as in many of Hitchcock’s films our relation to the villain is never the traditional booing and hissing that might be directed towards a classical villain. Instead, the absentee villain is replaced by a progressively maniacal hero, and it is the accomplice to the murder that the audience sympathizes with; in the final sequence in the bell tower Judy is portrayed as the victim, similarly, in Psycho when Norman frantically tries to cover the traces of his “mother’s” crime. It is with him that the audience’s sympathy is directed, hoping that he will get away with it when he disposes of the body in the swamp. Similarly, the audience is distanced from the initially humble and gentle Scottie as his psychosis progresses, and it is Judy that the audience is persuaded to be concerned for in the end sequence of the film despite her involvement in the crime that had crippled Scottie emotionally in the first place.

It could easily be questioned why Hitchcock decides to create these sorts of relationships in his films. The effect is to have left the audience beguiled, with their perceptions of right and wrong, hero and villain usurped by the complexities of their individual characters and situation that redefine those traditional character boundaries. An effect of this disillusionment is to engender an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, whereby, in Hitchcock’s films the traditional roles no longer hold true, in effect everybody is guilty, and everyone is a suspect. This might well have captured the zeitgeist of 1950’s America, locked in the paranoid fear of communism and turned loose on itself by the implications of McCarthyism. The film suggests, as often Hitchcock does, that there is no such thing as innocence, and that even the respectability of a policeman can be corrupted by obsession. Although as Hitchcock is fond of expressing in his films, it is often those in positions of authority, such as Scottie or the Coroner, that are most likely to be corruptible or negligent. The lasting impression that Hitchcock leaves, is that everyone has the potential to be the villain, and that the villains have the potential to be the victims.