Vertigo, Scottie loses what never existed
example · film: Vertigo (Hitchcock) ·
retold in 3 talks
When Scottie discovers Madeleine was always already Judy in disguise, he doesn't merely lose Madeleine, he retroactively establishes that what he lost never existed even before. A paradoxical, more radical loss.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“He doesn't just lose Madeleine but he retroactively establishes that what he lost never existed even before.”
“scotty has to mortify her, to change her into a dead woman… for the male libidinal economy, the only good woman is a dead woman.”
“it's literally too hot for him to look at it directly... you get burned if you do it”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
fantasy
×2
mortification
×1
sublimation vs. idealization in love
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Michael Powell1Raphael1Leonardo da Vinci1Kiri Te Kanawa1Gregory Potyomkin1Neil Jordan1David Cronenberg1Mario Vargas Llosa1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
When Scottie discovers Madeleine was always already Judy in disguise, he doesn't merely lose Madeleine, he retroactively establishes that what he lost never existed even before. A paradoxical, more radical loss., illustrating loss,fantasy,retroactive constitution
Scotty's refashioning of Judy into the dead Madeleine is a process of mortification, erasing the woman as a desiring entity; fantasy realized is nightmare; the male libidinal economy requires the woman to be dead., illustrating mortification,fantasy realized as nightmare,male desire
A French critic noticed that virtually every canonical film scholar misdescribes the restaurant scene in Vertigo as Scotty's point-of-view shot, when in fact Hitchcock shows it as what he imagines, the object is so intensely 'hot' it cannot be directly subjectivized, illustrating the structure of fantasy., illustrating sublimation vs. idealization in love,fantasy