http://labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/camera_movement.html
‘The other side of the beautiful illusion of timeless beauty is the fact of human mortality and sense of life’s meaninglessness that the illusion of timeless beauty papers over. This abyss of meaning is opened up in Vertigo by the famous vertigo-shot itself whereby Hitchcock embodies for the spectator the visceral experience of Scottie’s acrophobia in the combination zoom in/track out point-of-view shot. This representation through camera movement and zoom of the experience of falling creates an effect that is precisely the opposite of the camera movement that brings into being Scottie’s relationship to Madeleine and the world of the film that mimes that relationship. The effect of the vertigo-shot is to close down the gap between self and world which must be maintained to sustain the beautiful illusion of Madeleine, and the shot also, equally, has the effect of disrupting the spectator’s absorption in the world of the film. Hitchcock’s reverse-field cutting between the forward-tracking shot and backward-tracking reaction-shot sustains the distance between self and other, even as it articulates the allure of immersing the self in the other. In the vertigo-shot, the relationship between self and other implodes. Scottie is at once pulled into and seems to fall into the spatial field in a way that collapses the distance between subject and object that elsewhere is sustained by the cutting between forward and backward motions of the camera. Scottie confronts an implosion of space in a colorless spiraling void in a manner akin to madness. The experience of vertigo on the bell-tower of the Mission San Juan Bautista leads both to the destruction of Scottie’s beautiful illusion and of the subjectivity (his own) that it serves to sustain. Madeleine perishes moments after Scottie’s attack of vertigo, and Scottie himself is reduced to a catatonic state. Equally, in the vertigo shot, the beautiful illusion of the film itself is destroyed, the contemplative experience of beauty ravishingly created in Ernie’s restaurant is transformed into the sensation of shock and overt manipulation.
‘In the vertigo shot, the spiral structure, embodied in the staircase of the Mission San Juan Bautista, suddenly stretches like a spring whose tension has collapsed. Scottie will never reach his destination. Scottie’s vertigo stretches to breaking-point the thread linking his present desire to its future realization. We might speculate that had Hitchcock the resources of computer-controlled micro-camera technology, he would have filmed the movement of the camera in this shot as a spiral movement of increasing velocity. In the actual film, the out-of-control spiral is brilliantly evoked by the “movement” of the spiral staircase.’
Key Points in this text.
- The presence of ‘the vertigo shot’.
- How ‘the vertigo shot’ is created. (Synchronized track and zoom at the same time.)
- How ‘the vertigo shot’ shows Madeleine and Scottie’s relationship.
- The relationship of the viewer to the image.
- The feeling of vertigo and madness that ‘the vertigo shot’ creates.
- The destruction of Scottie’s view of Madeleine and the destruction of the viewer’s relationship with the text.
- The structure of ‘the vertigo shot’ also shows Scottie reaching his breaking point, emotionally and in terms of pushing his vertigo.
