A2 Film Studies – FM3 – CLOSE CRITICAL STUDY

Hitchcock’s VERTIGO

One of your exam questions might ask you how critics have responded to Vertigo; key issues or debates discussed by critics of the film or it might ask you to refer to and analyse one specific piece of writing by one or more critics of Vertigo.

Below you will find a list of reading that we have looked at in class (or in shortened form). These different critical responses to the film focus on different issues or debates that surround Vertigo. The list below identifies the main ‘issue’ that each writer focuses on in the work we have looked at.

Most of these sources can be found on www.candiflmstudies.blogspot.co.uk. For your revision, you should recap on the key ideas of each of these writers or select those whose writing you feel is the most relevant in helping you understand and enjoy Vertigo.

Name of critic / author Publication Issue they focus onJames F Maxfield A dreamer & His Dream: Another

Way of looking at Hitchcock’s VertigoFilm Criticism, Vol 14 – Apr 1990

Spectatorship Plot & Narrative

D.A. Miller Second Time Around – VertigoFilm Quaterly, Vol 62, No 2 Winter 2008-09

Spectatorship Camera Use of mise-en-scene Plot & Narrative

Penelope Houston VertigoSight & Sound – Spring 1959 p 139

Plot Characters Reception at time of

releaseIan Christie Chronicle of a Fall Foretold

Sight & Sound, Sept 2012 pp57-58 Vertigo as a Film Canon Critical reception to the

filmPeter Matthews Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock

Sight & Sound, Sept 2012 pp54-55 Spectatorship Plot & narrative Camerawork Mise-en-scene Characters

Berman Hitchcock’s Vertigo – The Collapse of the Rescue Phantasy3rd European Psychological Film Festival

Psychoanalytical perspective & Rescue Fantasy Theory

Pluskovich A Second Gaze at Hitchcock’s WomenSBCC Film Reviews

Representation of Gender Characters

Virginia Wight-Wexman The Critic as ConsumerFilm Quaterly; Vol 9, No 3- Spring 1986

Marxist critical perspective

Characters Production context Camera

Mise-en-scene

Tim Groves

Vertigo & the Maelstrom of Criticismwww.screeningthepast.com

Critical responses to Vertigo

Representation of Gender – Women and Men

Martin Rubin Hitchcock’s Golden AgeThrillers, Cambridge University Press 1999

Spectatorship Narrative structure Characters Camerawork

Huntjens Vertigo – A vertiginous gap in reality & a women who doesn’t existImage & Narrative – Online Magazine of Visual Narratives – Jan 2003

Feminist Critique – Representation of gender

Psychoanalysis & Lacan Characters Camera Narrative Structure

Andrew Sarris Notes on the Auteur TheoryThe Film Artist, 1962

Auteur Theory (general critique not applied to Vertigo)

Tania Modleski The Women Who Knew Too Much – Hitchcock and Feminist TheoryRoutledge, 1988

Feminist Theory Representation of

Women Hitchcock’s body of work Characters Camera Mise-en-Scene

Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure & Narrative CinemaScreen, 1975

Feminist Theory – Representation of Women

Robin Wood Fear of SpyingAmerican Film Vol 9, Issue 2 – Nov 1983

Feminist Theory – representation of gender / crisis of masculinity

Truffaut Hitchcock/TruffautSimon Schuster, 1983(4)

Auteur Theory Hitchcock’s body of work Pure cinema Plot / narrative characters