Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo (movie review) - Essay Example

The themes of Vertigo are death and desire. There are fascinations of death that is the illusory perfect itself is death, which is outside the realm of time. Vertigo can be thought as a death wish, or perhaps a subject that expands to propose a metaphysical terror, which is a wanting and fear of death. Consequently, it can be observed that there is a pull to bring back to life a dead’ woman as an enthusiastic illusion of undying love. The main character in the film has the desire to fall in love, but so many deaths result from his undying love affliction.

Some characters portray manipulation and excessive sexual obsession that result in the desire for romance and at times lead to death (Marshall and Poague 277). Hitchcock also explores the themes of illusion and reality. The treachery of the world shows in the shifting and unstable human identity and relationships; reality and illusion are thus interchangeable and ambiguous. For example, Scotties obsession turns into sickness; however, it is also equivalent to universal human tendency to a perfect image, to desire to substitute it for reality.

Vertigo brings out the philosophical subject of self deception, in which several characters in the film lied to others and were lied to by others throughout the movie. As a consequence, most of the relationships failed one after the other. Scottie believes in the deception that Judy is Madeline and that her dead ancestor possessed Madeline. Later, Scottie does not believe that Judy has heard of nor has relations to Madeline. In contrast, Scottie lies to Judy and himself in stating that he loves her when in reality he is just attempting to recreate Madeline in Judy (Hitchcock).

The film also deals also with psychological and obsession issues (Leitch and Poague 582). The failure of Scottie to overcome his vertigo causes him to further descent in madness. His obsession with Madeline causes him to have a complete mental breakdown when she dies.