Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' - 1958

After watching 'Vertigo' we can compare it to how women are perceived nowadays in films. Here are some notes we came up with:

• Male characters related to world of work and money
• Women are related to notion of success
• Madeline had money which her husband couldn't get unless she died so he killed her
• Men are producers of meaning and women the bearers - Scottie's actions make the film but the film is actually about Madeline
• Men provide the story and women provide the visual pleasure
• In Laura Mulvey's book 'Visual Pleasure' she write that:
  "the presence of woman in an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation."
• Hitchcock is critised by many as being a 'misogynist' 
• Binary Opposition; Active/Male and Passive/Female. 
• Women in films are the erotic objects of the male gaze
• Men on the side of meaning, reserve
  Women on the side of mystery, excess and emotion.   
• Midge, Scottie's ex-wife, still is in love with him. However, towards the end, she is forgotten about and she is side-lined and her story is left unfinished due to Scottie's new, more attractive love interest. 
• Midge went against the typical 1950's women - she was independent, works as a clothes designer and lived alone in her own apartment. 
• Scottie went for a submissive woman rather than one who cares for him. 
• Madeline was one of Alfred Hitchcock's 'ice maidens'.  He had a tendancy to cast blonde attractive women whose look was unattainable naturally e.g Madeline's white blonde hair. This was Hitchcock's representation of how he thought women should have looked.