Literature Film Quarterly (1986) - "Vertigo" as Orphic Tragedy
(Redirected from Vertigo as Orphic Tragedy)
Details
- article: "Vertigo" as Orphic Tragedy
- author(s): Royal S. Brown
- journal: Literature Film Quarterly (1986)
- issue: volume 14, issue 1, page 32
- journal ISSN: 0090-4260
- Sloan's Alfred Hitchcock: A Filmography and Bibliography (1995) — page 483, #782
- keywords: "Hitchcock's Films" - by Robin Wood, Alfred Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, Cary Grant, Chicago, Illinois, Christianity, Cinema Journal (1982) - Herrmann, Hitchcock, and the Music of the Irrational, Eva Marie Saint, François Truffaut, Henry Jones, James Stewart, Jean Douchet, Kim Novak, Lucie Mannheim, Motion picture criticism, Motion pictures, Mythology, New York City, New York, North by Northwest (1959), Novels, Pierre Boileau, Poetry, Poets, Powell Street, San Francisco, California, Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Religion, Robert Donat, Robin Wood, Royal S. Brown, San Francisco, California, Saul Bass, The 39 Steps (1935), Thomas Narcejac, Tom Helmore, Vera Miles, Vertigo (1958)
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Abstract
By allowing the audience to feel the presence of Scottie as an isolated, godlike (and rather dangerous, in the manner of quite a number of Hitchcock's male leads) egotist thriving on the sacrifice of human lives in order to guarantee the illusion of his own immortality, Hitchcock maintains, through the equivocal good/evil nature of his hero, the essential multivalency of mythic symbolism, a multivalency that can be felt on almost every level of the cinematic style as well.
