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Matte Blanco und di Narrativität: bezüglich Hitchcocks Vertigo
Matte Blanco's Theorie erlaubt es einem viele Erzählungen zu analysieren. Verschiedene Beispiele wurden genannt. Dann verweilen wir bei dem Beispiel vom Hitchcock's Vertigo, das sowohl die Kinobesucher als auch die Psychoanalytiker immer fasziniert hat. Dank Matte Blanco gibt es eine neue Herangehensweise: die vertauschten Bezienhungen und die Konfusion zwischen den verschiedenen Protagonisten und Themen im Film zeigen unablässig die Anwesenheit des symetrischen Modus sowie die der Bilogik, die von Matte Blanco beschrieben sind.
Matte Blanco y la narratividad: a propósito de Vertigo de Hitchcock
La teoría de Matte Blanco permite el análisis de numerosas narraciones. Se dan varios ejemplos. Después nos detendremos en el ejemplo de Vertigo de Hitchcock, que siempre ha fascinado tanto a los cinéfilos como a los psicoanalistas. Matte Blanco permite una nueva manera de verlo: las relaciones inversas y la confusión entre los diferentes protagonistas y temas del film ilustran sin discontinuidad la presencia del modo simetrico y del bilogico descritos por Matte Blanco.
Matte Blanco et la narrativité: à propos de Vertigo de Hitchcock
La théorie de Matte Blanco permet d'analyser de nombreux récits. Différents exemples en sont donnés. Puis nous nous attardons plus sur l'exemple de Vertigo, de Hitchcock, qui n'a jamais cessé de fasciner autant les cinéphiles que les psychanalystes. Matte Blanco en permet une approche renouvelée: les relations inversées et la confusion entre les différents protagonistes et items du film y illustrent en effet sans relâche la présence du mode symétrique et de la bilogique décrits par Matte Blanco.
Matte Blanco et la narrativita: a propósito de Vertigo de Hitchcock
La teoria di MB permette di analizzare storie di vario genere e se ne danno vari esempi. Ci si occupa più specificatamente dell'esempio di ‘Vertigo’ di Hitchcock, che non ha mai smesso di affascinare cinefili e psicoanalisti. MB ne permette un approccio rinnovato: le relazioni invertite e la confusione tra diversi protagonisti e passi del film in effetti si prestano senza posa ad illustrare la presenza del modo simmetrico e della bilogica descritta da MB.
1. A shorter version of this text was read as a paper, but not published (Drillet and Sanchez‐Cardenas, Citation2012).
2. Translated by Andrew Weller.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Ludovic Drillet for the stimulating exchanges that we have had on the subject of Vertigo. Some of the ideas expressed here arose from them.
Notes
1. A shorter version of this text was read as a paper, but not published (Drillet and Sanchez‐Cardenas, Citation2012).
2. Translated by Andrew Weller.
3. On this subject, see Matte Blanco (Citation1975, Citation1988) and the introductory texts to his work (Carvalho et al., Citation2009; Rayner, Citation1995; Sanchez‐Cardenas, Citation2011).
4. Matte Blanco always insists on his debt towards Freud, and on how the latter opened up the path upon which he himself ventured.
5. This makes us think of Freud's words (1900, p. 320): “Similarity, consonance, the possession of common attributes – all these are represented in dreams by unification&”
6. Or again, Freud (Citation1933[1932], p. 73): “The logical laws of thought do not apply in the Id, and this is true above all of the law of contradiction.”
7. The reader who wishes to examine my hypotheses in more detail can easily find illustrations of them in the film itself. To make this easier, I will indicate the precise timing of the film (hour, minute, second) so that the passages concerned can be located. When the credit titles begin (with a close up shot of a young woman's lips), the DVD I am referring to indicates 00:00:38. Moreover, the film script (by Coppel and Taylor) is available on the internet.
8. The widow of a wealthy banker, Lillie Hitchcock Coit (thus a homonym of the director!) gave money to the city of San Francisco so that a tower could be inaugurated (in 1933) in honour of its firefighters. To climb up it, one has to take a spiral staircase (like the one the heroines of Vertigo fall from). Hitchcock thus mischievously scatters his film with implicit interlocking notations. Painted in red, the GGB was the largest suspension bridge in the world until 1964.
9. In psychiatric French, an ‘illusion’ is a false perception which does not reach the point of being a hallucination.
10. The Church of the Mission San Juan Bautista, built in 1797, to the south of San Francisco, still exists. On the other hand, its so‐called tower, from which Madeleine and Judy fall to their deaths, was built especially for the period of the filming of Vertigo and was subsequently removed. Its creation thus had no other purpose than to illustrate the Hitchcockian theme of falling and death.
11. For those who have not seen the film, and in order to clarify the names of the characters: Elster‘s wife is called Madeleine. In the film, we only see her briefly when he pushes her from the bell tower of the San Juan mission. However, the woman who is called “Madeleine’ throughout the film is really Judy Barton: Elster asked her to play the role of his wife for Scottie's benefit (and ours‐the audience). It is only at the end of the film that this usurping of identity is understood.
12. We can also imagine that such a bra has an anti‐depressive fantasy value for a Breast, which, thanks to it, never falls: so the mother will not become depressed. And there is probably also here a veiled reference to Howard Hughes. For his film The Outlaw (1941), Hughes, a film director who was also an aeroplane manufacturer, had designed a brassiere that could do without straps thanks to its underwiring. The bust of Jane Russell (a protagonist in its own right in this film) was supposed to be made all the more prominent in this way. In fact, the actress found the brassiere very uncomfortable and preferred to simply “drop the straps” of her own brassiere for certain shooting sequences.
13. “Matter of fact, to be honest, I've been picked up before&”, Judy tells Scottie.
14. It is a Jaguar Mk VIII. 6332 of them were produced between October 1956 and October 1958 (Pagneux, Citation2001, p. 38). Its image combines sumptuous luxury and feline contours. In short, its coachwork is reminiscent of Madeleine's own sensual body. Here, more than ever, we can understand why the English language calls the coachwork of a car the “body”.
15. This is not specified in the film, but these ‘Portals of the Past’ are columns which, behind the Lloyd Lake, in the Golden Gate Park, were so‐named because they come from the façade of a mansion in front of which they remained standing after the earthquake and the fire that ravaged San Francisco in 1906. They therefore celebrate the city's determination to survive and, symmetrically, life within death.
16. The monument in question is the neo‐classical Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
17. The title of the novel by Boileau and Narcejac (Citation1954) from which Hitchcock drew inspiration to develop the plot of Vertigo.