http://hitchcock.tv/essays/vertigoessay.html
‘Hitchcock’s use of landscape and geography is most revealing. The locations chosen are all connected with the past and with time: the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum, the Portals of the Past, the ancient redwoods. Even the details within scenes are keyed as symbols for the timeless state Scottie has entered: the mirrors (traditional passageways into the underworld) in the flower shop at which Madeleine stops and the elegant restaurant, Ernie’s, in which he first sees her, and the fog-enshrouded graveyard of the Mission Dolores.
The central symbol for the film is, however, the mission at San Juan Batista. It is here that Scottie searches for Carlotta’s past in hopes of finding verification for Madeleine’s claims. Steeped in history, the mission is safely isolated from the everyday world. It is a museum of California’s past, a place of religious ritual and retreat. It is to these ancestral roots that Madeleine returns, and it is here that Scottie is forced to confront not only his obsession with her but also his phobia. Madeleine, driven to the site of Carlotta’s suicide by some force, ascends the bell tower of the mission, pursued by Scottie. In an agonizingly painful scene, Madeleine jumps from the tower as Scottie, frozen by his acrophobia and unable to climb the staircase, is forced to watch, for a second time, someone fall to his death.’
The mission at San Juan Batista represents several different things in my opinion. There are the connotations of the past and ancestry, as emphasized in this article. There is also the idea of spirituality to take into account, it being a religious place, this tying in with the idea of Madeleine being ‘possessed’ by the spirit of a dead relative. There is also a certain amount of irony in the fact that Madeleine appears to commit suicide in a religious setting, when suicide is seen as being a mortal sin. The tower has multiple meanings. The primary use is as an object for Madeleine to kill herself, where the evidence is there for Scottie to see, but with him unable to stop her, or see her face. It could also be seen as a phallic symbol. Scottie is unable to reach the top of the tower, thusly emasculating him.
