Vertigo: a free reading of Bruges-la

Vertigo: a free reading of Bruges-la-Morte
In 1958, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), the master of suspense, makes Vertigo (Sueurs
froides in the French version) with James Stewart and Kim Novak in main roles. The scenario
results from a free adaptation of the thriller D’Entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac1. This is a
sounding title which reminds the biblical Christ "risen from the dead" or Lazarus (John
11:43). By its English culture and its London childhood, Hitchcock knew probably the novel
of Rodenbach. Even more certainly French Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Keep in
mind that Korngold's opera had given Bruges-la-Morte in the spotlight (1920). In 1955, the
Argentine Hugo del Carril had adapted Vertigo in Spanish under the name Mas Alla del
olvido.
Here are the essential elements of the screenplay. John Ferguson (played by James Stewart),
nicknamed "Scottie", is a former police officer who suffers from vertigo. He sees a childhood
friend, Gavin Elster2, responsible contractor for the shipbuilding, which is investigating the
behavior of its morbid wife (Kim Novak). She seems crazy. She is fascinated by her
grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, a high society lady of San Francisco, which ended her life in
obscure circumstances. Scottie follows the young woman and falls quickly in love. After
spinning her through San Francisco, he managed to save her from an attempted suicide by
drowning at the Golden Gate Bridge. One day she went to the Spanish mission where Carlotta
is buried. After a long gathered at the grave of her grandmother, she went up into the belfry of
the tower and flows into the void. Unable to follow her due to his vertigo, Scottie can not
make the slightest gesture to avert the tragedy. He feels guilty of his death and sank into a
deep melancholy. He begins to wander the labyrinthine streets of San Francisco, as depressive
Viane does in Bruges. Until he meets a rather red hair vulgar young
office worker; Judy3 looks like two drops of water to Elster’s deceased
wife ; he believes that he has found back her. He follows her into his
hotel room and manages to seduce her. Gradually, he forces dye their
hair and to dress on the same fashion as the woman he loved, as Viane
had proceeded with Jane in Bruges-la-Morte. A close-up emphasizes
the spiral bun of Judy. The theme of the spiral is prominent in the film
and the spiral staircase gives access to the fatal suicide tower4. In its
positive aspect, this figure formed by the hair could be a symbol of
progress towards the knowledge of the ascent to knowledge and power
of transfiguration of the beholder. But according to interpretation of
the French philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Vertigo "depicts the circles
that fail to close in on themselves, degenerating into a spiral down, a dive into the swirling
abyss.5 "The spiral staircase evokes also the descent itself, in search of a hidden truth in his
being deep. Anyway, both versions complement each other.
1
Vertigo (Sueurs froides), Gallimard Folio Pocket, Paris, 2006.
The name "Gavin" is one of the Anglicized versions of "Gawain," the knight of King Arthur
fails in the quest for the Grail because he hase lost his senses. "Elster" could refer to a
superlative of the word "else" which means "else" and mark alterity.
3
As Judith is a name charged with biblical references. She is both the castrating and liberating woman. It is
interesting to note that Mary Magdalene is often considered as the new Judith; this name means "Jewish."
4
This is the same ambivalent theme of regenerative belfry tower before becoming the place and instrument of
suicide in Le Carillonneur by Rodenbach (Passé Présent Bruxelles, 1987).
5
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, La marque du sacré : Essai sur une dénégation, Carnets Nord, Paris, 2009.
In the Masonic tradition of the 18th century, the Fellow acceded by a screw-shaped staircase to the Middle
Chamber, the Holy of Holies, where gathered the Masters.
2
In a scene from the film, Judy mistakenly wears a jewel of the dead wife, which allows
Scottie to discover the deception. In reality, he served as a cover for the murder of the wife of
his friend who wanted to grab her inheritance. Assuming correctly that the detective, because
of his phobia, would not dare climb up the belfry, Elster threw the corpse of his murdered
wife to make believe in suicide: Scottie would be the sworn eyewitness as a former police
inspector. To confound the double of the victim, Scottie takes her back to the Spanish
mission. Cured of his vertigo, he manages to accompany her to the top of the tower and shows
her that he understood the plot of adulterous couple. But when he wants to kiss the woman he
loves in spite of everything the face of a nun suddenly appears. Taking fright, Judy falls in the
void at the same place as the wife of Gavin Elster. Both women are now confused until in
death, as at the end of Bruges-la-Morte. For the symbolic aspect, it should to note that the last
scene, where Judy dies, goes into the three-stacks bells tower of Mission San Juan Bautista.
Destroyed by fire, it had been reconstructed for the purpose of film.
Several coincidences between both works, too marked to be fortuitous, are to highlight here.
Bruges and San Francisco, lost in the mists, the sad tones - well, the day of his death, the
beloved wife wears a grey suit - have a important religious heritage from the Spanish period
that determines significantly psychology of both cities and destiny of the main heroes, Scottie
and Viane. As the Flemish city, San Francisco is a maze of streets that look alike and disorient
the imprudent uninitiated visitor. Midge6 (played by Barbara Bel Geddes), the former
girlfriend of policeman seems to play the role of servant Barbe One can also see the same
ambivalent theme in another masterpier by Rodenbach : the regenerative belfry tower before
becoming the place and the instrument of a suicide in Le Carillonneur. Intrigued by the
secrets that haunt Madeleine, Scottie goes to the library Argozy to learn more about the early
history of San Francisco. Hitchcock was inspired by a book store still in business, the famous
Argonaut Bookstore.
The sign evokes the Golden Fleece and Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, whose quest
serves as a mythical underground thread in Bruges-la-Morte. Adaptation, a time entrusted to
the writer Alec Coppel, has finally fallen to Samuel Taylor. Voluntarily, he will refuse to
browse the original text of both French writers. Hitchcock has largely influenced the free
reading of the plot imagined by Boileau and Narcejac. The novel became his own, he took
property of it : "It interested me most the effort made by James Stewart to recreate a woman,
from the image of the dead wife”, the Master of suspens comments .
In a penetrating article entitled “De la ressemblance : Georges Rodenbach-Alfred Hitchcock”
and published in Le Monde de Rodenbach7, Dr. Ana
Gonzalez Salvador had explained that the symbolic
storyline and the canvas of Vertigo are closer to the
universe of Bruges-la-Morte novel than Boileau and
Narcejac.
The suicide attempt of "wife" in the waters of San
Francisco, where she has just throwing a rose petals , based
on the design of the frontispiece of Khnopff Bruges-la-Morte, itself inspired by the John
Everett Millais Ophelia. Although most prominently, as regards my study, the central
character in the story is called ... Madeleine 8. In the Vanities, a popular pictorial genre in the
17th century, the motives for the hair, knotted or deployed, the necklace, mirror, hourglass,
candles, spring flowers or bubbles, are frequently associated with iconographic universe of
Mary Magdalen. In the crucial scene that allows Scottie to discover imposture of Judy, she
6
"Midge" is also the name of a famous mosquito prevalent in the Highlands. The fellow Scottie is a sort of goad
that drives the plot, as is the case of the servant Beard in Bruges-la-Morte who refuses to endorse the intrusion of
Jane Scott at Quai du Rosaire.
7
Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Le Monde de Rodenbach, Labor, Brussels, 1999, p. 105-117.
8
In his attempt to drown, "Madeleine" is wearing a black dress and white gloves ...
bears the pendant of her "ancestor" Carlotta Valdes. It consists of ruby set in gold. Is it a
symbol of the Trinity, a sign of spiritual legitimacy usurped by Judy, the emblem of perfect
Love?
In any case, the jewel is strikingly similar to that of the cap of Mary of
Burgundy as painted by Anton Waiss well as by Niclas Reiser. This
sovereign so often likened with Mary Magdalene. ...
The final scene of Vertigo represents the white tomb of the wife. One
word is listed in capital letters: MADELEINE.
Hitchcock voluntarily demonstrates that first name is charged with a
mystical significance, as if he had understood the deeper meaning of
Bruges-la-Morte, though, concede it, it appears already in the novel
by Boileau and Narcejac.
In this context, Spanish religious missions that play a role in the film
are named Dolores9 (the Pain, or Our Lady of Sorrows, is a form of devotion born at time of
Mary of Burgundy and sometimes associated with the feminine apostle of Christ) and San
Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist) where the final scene takes place. Hitchcock makes also a
religious a trigger of the drama, as is the case of the nuns scene in “Robert le Diable” and the
decisive intervention of Sister Rosalie at beguine which opens the eyes of a maid about the
Hugues Viane libertine situation. Finally, the tower, rebuilt for the purposes of the film, is part
of the conventional iconography and even of the surname of Mary Magdalen. The tower is the
central tragic focal ending the story.
To summarize these crossed paths between Rodenbach's novel and the Hitchcock’s film, one
could say that "Madeleine" is not the real murdered Madeleine. This is Judy playing
Madeleine to better deceive the man who continues to follow her through the city, as the
victim of a spell. As for the amazing soundtrack, it was written by Bernard Herrmann: it
would be reminiscent of Wagner Tristan and Iseult. I shall show later that scenes from
Parsifal traveled filigree Bruges-la-Morte. Finally, the color gamut of Vertigo revolves around
the green and red, the traditional colors of Mary Magdalene in religious iconography.
In the hotel room, "Madeleine" appears Scottie surrounded by a green fluorescent halo. It
evokes the Astral Light dear to the 19th century occultists. This light often associated with the
color green (emerald, green snake, etc..) would necessary factor for the success of the Great
Work. It is considered a kind of "universal" all-pervading energy, like the Shekhinah, the
Sophia or celestial Virgin. The wife of Bruges-la-Morte ...
It is mainly the light of the world shining in the deepest darkness of the prologue of the
Gospel of John or the Sophia - a poor counterfeit of the Sophia in the case of Judy - the
unspotted mirror of God's activity, the splendor of eternal light, as evidenced by this
seemingly enigmatic response of "Madeleine"
tormented his distraught lover :
“There is so little I know. It is as though I were walking down
a long corridor that once was mirrored, and fragments of
mirror still hang there, dark and shadowy, reflecting a dark
image of me... and yet not me... someone else, in other
clothes, of another time, doing things I have never done... but
still me...
And I can't stop to ask why, I must keep on walking. At the and of the corridor there is nothing but darkness, and
I know when I walk into the darkness, I'll die. »
9
Mission Dolores venerates the strange Virgin of Guadalupe.
Vertigo through Bruges-la-Morte continued to influence very many filmmakers. Include Brian
De Palma (1940) who will carry out a variation, Obsession (1975), from the cult film. This
time, Florence is the anthropomorphized the city (who coveted the title of "Heavenly
Jerusalem" in the Middle Ages, particularly in the short-lived theocracy of Savonarola), much
closer to Bruges by its past and its Catholic heritage than San Francisco. The music is
again entrusted to Bernard Herrmann. But what do we really think about the tomb of the dead
wife? At De Palma, it becomes a colossal mausoleum ...
It’s the replica of the church of San Miniato al Monte in Florence! Do the young De Palma
part of those who understood the symbolism of the Alfred Hitchcock’s film, itself inspired by
Bruges-la-Morte? It seems that we can respond by yes: the double of the dead is called Sandra
Portinari, the surname of Beatrice, the Beloved and the mystical inspiration of Dante. In the
film, the heroine restores Madonna of Bernardo Dadi. Some index appears at a time of the
film : Eve by Masaccio and Botticelli's Venus, or two references to archetypal universal
feminine principle.
The fact is that the curators of the exhibition Hitchcock et l'Art : Fatales coïncidences, which
took place at the Centre Pompidou in 2001 10, felt necessary to cling to the original design of
Khnopff that opens the Rodenbach’s frontispiece : “Bruges-la-Morte”.
10
Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences. Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), June 6 to 24
September 2001. The design had already been presented to the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, November 16
2000 to April 16, 2001.