What is the point of this one scene in Vertigo?

December 26, 2023 1:15 PM

I think of Vertigo as a pretty tightly constructed thing, but there's this one scene that doesn't seem to have any reason for being there. There are some spoilers under the cut.

After Jimmy Stewart follows Kim Novak to the Palace of the Legion of Honor where she looks at the portrait of Carlotta Valdes, he follows her to the McKittrick Hotel. At this point everything fits in pretty well with the narrative: Judy/Madeleine is getting Scottie to believe that she's having some kind of delusion about Carlotta.

At the McKittrick, which is supposed to be Carlotta's old home, Judy/Madeleine disappears, as does her car. Scottie sees her in the window, goes in, and talks to the woman at the hotel desk who says J/M/C has not been there. When Scottie goes out, the car is gone. This part just doesn't make sense as part of what Gavin Elster is trying to do. He's trying to get Scottie to believe his wife is mentally ill so he'll believe the rest of what happens, including what is set up to look like her suicide, not some supernatural story. What am I missing?

posted by less-of-course to Media & Arts (1 answer total)

Best answer: Gavin and Judy are trying to sell Scottie on the Carlotta possession story, or at least introduce the possibility of doubt. Note that Gavin tells Scottie that Madeline doesn’t know that Carlotta is her great-grandmother.

With that said, this scene is basically the trope namer for Fridge Logic:

Fridge Logic has been the writer's-room term for these little Internal Consistency issues for a good while, as in "Don't sweat the Fridge Logic, we've got bigger fish to fry. We've only got 20 minutes left to work in three costume changes, a foreign language, and a weird wig." It refers to some illogical or implausible plot point that the audience doesn't realize during the show, but only long afterwards. This naming is highly subjective, since not every person follows the same train of thought. Some people will never even realise there was a problem, while others will call it a Plot Hole, since they already noticed the problem during the show.
The concept was first suggested by Alfred Hitchcock. When asked about the scene in Vertigo when Madeleine mysteriously and impossibly disappears from the hotel Scottie saw her in, he responded by calling it an "icebox scene": a scene that "hits you after you've gone home and start pulling cold chicken out of the icebox."

Various theories about Vertigo point to this as some indicator that the film is Not As It Seems. I mostly think it’s Hitchcock messing with the viewer in the same way that the characters are messing with each other.
posted by zamboni at 2:17 PM on December 26, 2023 [14 favorites]