The fugitive becomes obsessed by one of Morel’s friends (quite possibly the woman with whom Morel was in love, the reason for the trip and the inspiration for the invention), a woman named Faustine, but, while he can see her, hear her, even touch her, he cannot do anything to alter her actions. She is implacable in playing out her days on the island in the exact sequence they have already followed — no variation, no alteration is possible. The fugitive can hide in her room but can only enter or exit when the door would have been open during the days Faustine actually spent on the island. He can reach out and touch her, knows her to have a physical dimension, but his caresses are completely ineffective — not even a hair is moved, much less an article of clothing. He could perhaps kiss her, but it would be like kissing a wall. And always, no matter what the fugitive does, she and all of the other islanders go about their unwavering routine.
The obsession is fataclass="underline" the fugitive, resigning himself to the fact that he will never be able to speak to Faustine or be heard by her, never even so much as feel her flesh give when he takes her hand; knowing also that Faustine, the Faustine who once walked where he now sees her projection walking, the Faustine who once spurned Morel’s advances, the Faustine who debarked upon this island and some days hence left it, no longer exists, has been killed by Morel’s terrible invention, records himself, ensuring his own death. He records himself walking beside Faustine’s projection. He remarks upon things when Faustine appears to have been listening at the time she was recorded. He listens when Faustine says something. He simulates an existence simultaneous to Faustine’s, and, in so doing, makes that existence real for the next person to turn on Morel’s invention, for that person will see that Faustine, previously alone on the beach or under the shade of a tree, is now accompanied by a man who seems ever so slightly out of place but who nonetheless acts as though he belongs.
…
That Bioy Casares would have written “Madeleine” in the passage quoted above — it must be a coincidence, but suppose it isn’t? After all, why should he have written “Madeleine” and not “Faustine”? There is a Dora and a Jane Gray in the narrative — why not write either of their names, instead of this Madeleine, a character who does not appear anywhere else but in that passage? Perhaps Bioy Casares, a Francophile, had derived this Madeleine from the same place that Vertigo's writers had derived it, from Proust. “An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory — this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?” being Proust’s famous reaction to the tasting of a madeleine.
…
All of Boileau and Narcejac’s characters have been renamed in the film — Flavierès is Scottie, Paul Gévigne is Gavin Elster, Renée Sourange is Judy Barton, Pauline Lagerlac is Carlotta Valdes. There is no Midge, of any name. Only Madeleine’s name has remained the same.
…
I decided I would say no more on the subject of my doppelganger. I would not be coerced into seeing a doctor. Though I’d always suspected there was something the matter with me, I believed in what I’d seen, and I didn’t want it trivialized or turned into a symptom of an illness. My wife was convinced that I was somehow criticizing her by refusing to see someone (she had always seen a therapist). She stopped speaking to me. If I tried to talk about anything, even what we would do for dinner, she would ignore me, and if I persisted, she would bring up the doctor and my unwillingness to get better. I slept on the couch. She stayed away as often as possible. Though we lived together, were still married, I might as well have been watching her on a security camera.
…
As any Freudian dreambook would have told Hitchcock, dreaming that you can’t go up a flight of stairs is a symbol of impotence.
(Krohn, Hitchcock at Work)
…
How does Elster get down from the tower? We know that he does, but it seems impossible. Maybe even more mysterious, how can this have been part of his plan? Scottie, paralyzed with fear, is on the staircase. He cannot move, but, for Elster, there is no other way down. For the plan to work, Scottie must be stuck on the stairs. But the plan will fail if Scottie is stuck on the stairs. The body is on the roof below, dead, obviously from a fall from the tower. Does no one think to go up to the top, to find out what happened, whether she was pushed? They’ve just seen Scottie go up after this woman who is now dead. They don’t suspect Elster — they haven’t seen him so they can’t suspect him — but they aren’t interested in finding out what the man they have seen is doing? He hasn’t come down. The police arrive. They investigate the body on the roof and the circumstances of its death. There are people all over the grounds, watching, looking. How long does Elster stay in the tower, waiting for a chance to sneak away without anyone seeing him? All the while, down below, the police are trying to get in touch with him, to let him know that his wife has died, apparently a suicide, in a mission many miles south of the city. Mr. Elster, we regret to inform you. While they phone his home in the city, he waits in the tower, watching the priests and laypeople, the policemen, Scottie. They wait for word from him, wait for the picture of what has happened to come clear. Once he has checked his tie and cleaned under his fingernails for the twentieth time, after he has straightened his shirt and his hair yet again, what else is there left to do? How many times would he have gone to the edge, just to see? How many times would he have thought about jumping?
…
The act of creation implies a separation. Something that remains attached to the creator is only half-created. To create is to let take over something which did not exist before, and is therefore new. And the new is inseparable from pain, for it is alone.
(John Berger, “Ape Theatre”)
…
The movie is doubled. The chase on the rooftops is the chase up the tower.
…
And not only Elster. Scottie, too, would be trapped in the tower. With his acrophobia and his vertigo, how can he possibly get down? In the novel, it’s explained: he sits on each riser, going down step by step on his butt. I remember doing almost the same at Teotihuacan, on a trip to Mexico City with my wife, a year or two before we were married. She watched from the ground as I went up the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. Going up was easy enough, steep and awkward but manageable, but coming back down, the steps were so shallow you couldn’t see the next step past the end of the one you were on — each step seemed to drop off into nothing. I had not been the only one taking those steps half sitting down. It hadn’t even seemed undignified, as though I and the others were paying tribute to the gods the Nahuatls had worshipped there. One crawls in the presence of gods. Hitchcock, though, reveals a lack of humility. He cuts from the tower to the inquest. No crawling. No genuflecting. As at the beginning, we leave Scottie metaphorically suspended or trapped, unable to get down. Can we be sure he does? Is he trapped in a tower in the fantasy he’s invented, trapped on the gutter?