Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
The central question here (as in Rebecca and Psycho) is can someone from the past, someone dead, take possession of another person? Hitchcock means to ramp up the mania of a tortured-past-affecting-the-present to manic proportions. In conversation with Truffaut, Hitchcock said that when Scottie is in love with someone he believes to be dead, when he dresses up Judy to look like his lost love Madeleine, he is engaging in a kind of necrophilia.
At the one hour mark in Vertigo what at all could be considered a desirable outcome?
And when he reveals he knows everything, what's the heartbreaking waver in his voice when he says, "you shouldn't keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn't have been that sentimental"?
Why me? He says. He speaks of being free of the past.
Stewart in probably his second last major starring role (Anatomy of a Murder being last?)
The misery of being right. The inevitability of being wronged.
At the one hour mark in Vertigo what at all could be considered a desirable outcome?
And when he reveals he knows everything, what's the heartbreaking waver in his voice when he says, "you shouldn't keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn't have been that sentimental"?
Why me? He says. He speaks of being free of the past.
Stewart in probably his second last major starring role (Anatomy of a Murder being last?)
The misery of being right. The inevitability of being wronged.