I found this paper from undergrad on an old disk. Does anyone else cringe when they read things they wrote a long time ago?
Red Light, Green Light: Alfred Hitchcock’s Use of Color in
VertigoIn Lincoln F. Johnson’s superb discussion of color in
Film: Space, Time, Light, and Sound, the author identifies many ways visual tone functions in film. From simply defining shapes to establishing mood, the manipulation of light, Johnson theorizes, affects almost every aspect of a finished film. As an example, the author analyzes Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 film
Red Desert, highlighting how the director uses color to, among other things, describe characters and situations, decorate images, establish visual continuity, intensify or deintensify scenes, serve as an evocative reminder of previous scenes, and parallel thematic concerns (pg. 128-164). Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film,
Vertigo, demonstrates comparable technical mastery. Although two vivid colors—green and red—dominate the film, the above tonal functions operate throughout, bestowing a rich texture on the film that makes it a masterpiece.
Vertigo creates a dizzying world of mystery, suspense, and horror within the mind of a love-struck detective. Scottie, played by James Stewart, retires from the San Francisco police force after he tragically discovers his paralyzing fear of heights. He is called back to detective work soon after, when an old college friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), requests that Scottie follow his wife, Madeleine, a beautiful but suicidal blonde played by Kim Novak. Scottie rescues her from her leap into San Francisco Bay, and they fall in love, but his efforts to cure her psychological condition fail when his acrophobia prevents him from stopping a second, successful, suicide attempt--a dive from a bell tower. Madeleine’s death devastates Scottie, and he becomes obsessed with her memory; he scours the city until he finds Judy (also Novak), a redhead with a striking resemblance to Madeleine. Scottie forces her to dye her hair blonde and dress just like his dead lover to satisfy his unfulfilled desires, but he soon discovers that Judy does not merely look like Madeleine, she is Madeleine--actually a double used by Elster in an ingenious plot to murder his real wife. Scottie forces Judy to confess by taking her to the scene of the crime, the bell tower. As soon as Scottie learns the truth, Judy leaps to her death just as she was supposed to have done earlier.
As Johnson states, “the most familiar function of tone is to describe…to indicat[e] the precise nature of the moment or thing” (pg. 132). In Vertigo, Hitchcock uses the colors present in the initial introductions of the two characters played by Kim Novak to accurately describe each of them. Madeleine first appears in Ernie’s, the restaurant in which Elster has instructed Scottie to make his initial observations. The opening shot of the scene sweeps across the room, displaying the bright red walls of the establishment. The crowd of people eating blends together in a mass of blues and grays at the bottom of the frame until Madeleine appears. She sticks out immediately, even with her back to the camera, which follows her as she and her husband leave. As she passes Scottie sitting at the bar, we get a close up of her profile against the brilliant red wall. The color saturates the shot and creates overpowering feelings of both sexuality and violence within the character. The intensity of the background immediately describes Madeline as an impulsive, emotional character without the need of a textual confirmation.
Scottie’s first meeting with Judy contains a similar description through color. As he wanders through the city after Madeleine’s supposed death, he passes a woman on the street who looks strikingly like Madeleine. He notices the resemblance and follows her to her hotel room. Judy answers his knock at the door and appears, framed between a white wall and a brown door and in front of a nearly pure white background, wearing a bold green sweater and skirt. Just as in Ernie’s, Novak’s character is overwhelmed by a bright color with a strong emotional impact. Judy’s green suggests the obsessive covetousness that Scottie has for his dead lover’s beauty. Also, this cooler hue serves to describe Judy’s calm, composed manner, a trait echoed by her casual suppression of the shock of Scottie’s appearance. Hitchcock, therefore, makes important use of the visual tone’s ability to describe characters and situations; he allows color to introduce Judy and Madeline to the audience.
From the beginning of color film, decoration has been an important purpose of visual tone. As Johnson states, its principal role “is to provide sensuous attraction by the enrichment of forms” (pg. 135). Vertigo, as it is an early color film, depends on the bright shades and deep contrasts to lend it a certain visual interest. This function appears most clearly in Scottie’s enchanting dream sequence, a dazzling display of colorful animation mixed with live action in a dizzying spiral. The vibrant colors used by Hitchcock in this scene appear as nothing more than spectacle; the dream allows the director to showcase the potential brilliance of Technicolor. The intense colorization of Saul Bass’s opening credits, using the same spiral shape, serves much the same purpose. Throughout the film, in fact, Hitchcock uses vivid color to decorate his scenes with unique visual contrasts.
Lincoln Johnson also describes the need of a filmmaker to “provide a…sense of harmony and…tonal continuity” (pg. 138) by maintaining a consistent range of color throughout a film. Besides tying the piece together, this continuity allows the director to generate dramatic tension by introducing shots of contrasting tonal value at points of conflict or intense emotion. The importance of uniformity connects with Johnson’s notion of intensification in that tonal progressions aid filmic unity while operating like a “musical crescendo” (pg. 140). Deviations from the established norms of color in a film build emotion and suspense within the narrative. In Vertigo, Hitchcock relies throughout on soft, indistinguishable backgrounds with multiple quiet colors. In Midge’s apartment, for example, the beige walls and brown furniture blend in with the rainbow of grays, tans and light yellows to create a drab atmosphere; even the cantilever brassiere is a boring shade of off-white. Furthermore, with the story occurring in San Francisco, the exterior shots reflect a hazy gray fog that covers any visual distinction. The generally soft tones in the film create a consistent backdrop for Scottie’s journey, while simultaneously allowing Hitchcock to create interesting and shocking visual counterpoints. In the scene of Madeline’s introduction discussed earlier, the brilliant red walls of Ernie’s restaurant represent an intense emotional scene. Scottie’s infatuation begins here as the powerful setting overwhelms him. The vivid tonal contrast from the preceding scenes reflects the change in Scottie’s attitude toward his assignment.
In similar fashion, much later in the film, Scottie has an emotional experience in anther scene imbued with bright color. As Judy steps out of the bathroom in her apartment, looking exactly like Madeline, green light bathes the set, saturating the entire scene. Again, with this deviation from the tonal continuity, Hitchcock heightens the tension and emotion in the scene by merely manipulating the lighting values. First establishing a familiar tonal pattern, then violating it at specific moments, he creates a smooth, consistent dramatic pace.
This story hinges on Scottie’s discovery of Judy’s true identity toward the end of the film. This revelation comes through the visual tone’s ability to evoke memories of previous scenes. Johnson writes of both internal and external evocation, explaining that internal references “relate material in one part of the film to material that has gone before,” while external references inspire “associations with material quite outside the film” (pg. 148). In Vertigo, the external references to Rear Window that appear in Scottie’s dangle from the rooftop and the view outside Midge’s window may occur outside the influence of color, but Scottie’s revelation depends heavily on tonal recurrence. Just after emerging from the bathroom into the aforementioned green light, Judy sits to put on an exquisitely red ruby necklace, asking Scottie’s help fastening it. Recognizing the vivid shade, Scottie remembers the necklace as one of the objects Madeleine obsessed over before her death, and, suddenly, he knows the truth; Madeleine’s red necklace finally clarifies the identity of Judy/Madeleine. This scene displays the powerful ability of color to summon the past, both within and outside the narrative.
Finally, and most importantly, Hitchcock uses color as a parallel to the complex plot of the film. The dual nature of Novak’s character forms the basis for the vertigo felt by both Scottie and the audience. Hitchcock masterfully uses color as a metaphor for the two personalities, weaving them together, so that they are, at the same time, both indistinguishable and completely unique. He first grants Madeleine and Judy independent interiorities by assigning each a dominant and contrasting color—red for Madeleine and green for Judy. He then suggests the unity of the two women by skillfully mixing the colors in subtle, yet meaningful ways, which ultimately reveal the truth. As previously mentioned, the assignment of each character’s primary color comes in their respective introduction. Although these scenes are dominated by either red or green, each contains a portion of its opposite within the frame. In Madeline’s red soaked appearance, she wears a bright green gown, so that in the profile shot a small sliver of Madeleine’s emerald collar appears at the bottom of the frame, a strong visual contrast to the otherwise completely red background. Similarly, in Judy’s first scene, her dramatic green outfit finds subtle contrast in her copper-red hair. In each of these scenes, the subtle inclusion of the contrasting color suggests the dual nature of the character while conveying an internal conflict and emotional struggle. Vertigo contains countless other uses of green and red to represent the duality of Kim Novak’s character; Madeline eludes Scottie on the streets of San Francisco in her green Jaguar, while the sign of the Hotel Empire, where Judy lives, glows neon green at night, but hangs painted bright red during the day. Thus, Hitchcock uses multiple combinations and mixtures of the film’s dominant colors as a visual metaphor of the elaborate textual plot. This technique helps clarify the action while creating a brilliant and riveting pictorial quality.
The various functions of visual tone allow Alfred Hitchcock to improve dramatically on the intense psychological drama of this film. Using color in such complex and interesting ways distinguishes Hitchcock as more than just the “master of suspense,” he is a true master of the technical art of filmmaking.
