Psychoanalysis Of Vertigo

There is an obvious imbalance between the id, ego and superego of the protagonist. As a detective, he is supposed to be investigative and objective, that is, like the superego. However, he lets the id, with its instinctive affinity for adventure and pleasure, dominate him and make him fall directly into Elster’s trap. In fact, each character has one of these principles more dominating than the other. Through most of the movie, before the supposed death of Madeleine, Midge plays the critical superego,  Madeleine- the vulnerable id, and Scottie, trying to strike a balance between truth and fiction, plays the realist ego.

Hitchcock's Vertigo contains one of the most extraordinary examinations of obsessive desire associated with the male gaze. The texture of Hitchcock's film itself has a strange, powerful and sensual quality, implicating us almost physically in Scottie's vertiginous and ultimately hopeless desire, which is expressed at first through an erotic desire for a ideal fantasised woman and then through an obsession with the abyssal absence of the Other. The quality of the first erotic desire is almost traditional, and is certaintly familiar. There is a woman with both a polished and glowing surface, who shines ecstatically with great beauty, but who also posseses a dark and troubling depth. She is a woman haunted and possessed by an atavistic female double. The woman being desired (Madeleine) is mysterious, unknowable, and troubled.                                                                                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tesqTwX7cpc                  In This Scene we see Madeleine is seen through the eyes of Scottie and she is almost portrayed in an angelic manner which is enhanced by the ambiguous use of lighting; as she first emerges from the bathroom her identity is almost concealed in a shroud of soft and hazy light. When you break down this scene, you notice in particular the Green Tint applied, the  dramatic close up of Scottie as he gazes at Madeleine, the tension is built within the shots that eventually lead to the kiss between the two. Generally I would not use this film as an inspiration for my own film as I intend to shoot a documentary, however I can definitely appreciate the way that the shots are built up using a variety of editing techniques.  .