…
Would it then make more sense to say that the first part ends before the inquest, with Scottie still in the tower?
…
[INT. Inquest (DAY)]
…
Scottie exits the tower and the chapel moments after Madeleine’s fall. No one sees him. (Unless Elster does.) But Scottie is at the inquest, under suspicion. Did he come forward, tell someone, “I was there; I saw”? Why would he, after sneaking away?
…
We are not here to pass judgment on Mr. Ferguson’s lack of initiative. He did nothing. The Law has little to say on the subject of things left undone.
(01:20:00)
…
Things left undone.
…
Madeleine: I’m obliged to believe that nothing finishes when we think it does. that’s what’s so terrible.
(Boileau Narcejac, D’Entre les Morts)
…
At 01:22:00, Scottie and Elster look down out of the window.
The view can’t be less troubling for Scottie than the one from Midge’s window at the beginning of the film — even though we don’t get a perspective shot here (or the famous “vertigo effect”), it is an echo of that view, a loose end now tied up. Scottie seems at peace, calm. Elster tells him his future plans and Scottie looks out the window, unanswering but also untroubled. He is cured. How else can we interpret this? Though he is surprised at the end of the film when he comes to and then passes the spot where he had to stop before, he has been cured much earlier, by the shock of Madeleine’s fall, a shock made reference to by Midge in the very scene this shot refers back to. Scottie has conquered his acrophobia before his breakdown, and the breakdown has nothing to do with his acrophobia except incidentally, because it was brought on by Madeleine’s fall, which Scottie sees as having been partly caused by his acrophobia, or rather by the limitations brought on by that condition.
…
At some point, I realized that the book I had really been writing was not the book under contract. I would never finish that book. The book I was writing I was writing without putting ink on paper. It was a calcification of my thoughts into the crevices left behind by the authors of the books I was reading at the time. I had begun to think of myself, the self I was creating, as a geological formation, a spire ascending not because I willed it but because something had begun — me — and then persisted through time.
…
Increasingly, the process of novelization goes hand in hand with a straitjacketing of the material’s expressive potential. One gets so weary watching authors’ sensations and thoughts get novelized, set into the concrete of fiction, that perhaps it is best to avoid the novel as a medium of expression.
(Dyer, Rage)
…
The judge at the inquest says that Mr. Elster could not have anticipated Mr. Ferguson’s weakness. During their first meeting, in his office, Elster asked Scottie, “Shouldn’t you be sitting down?” There’s no way the judge could know that of course, but shouldn’t Scottie be suspicious that this is the story Elster is going with?
…
How could the two hours of Vertigo fit between the rain gutter and the pavement? Although our experiences can’t alter time — time is useful as a dimension precisely because, like spatial dimensions, it isn’t subjective — scientists believe our circumstances can and do change the way our memories work. Or, more exactly, our circumstances change the speed at which our memories recall, and therefore the amount of things they are able to recall in a given moment. Although time doesn’t actually slow down, the amount of things a person is able to think at once increases when he or she has the feeling that time has slowed down. Maybe we use thoughts as a kind of internal clock: One thought takes one second, two thoughts take two seconds, and so on. We think two things and think two seconds have passed, but, because our memories are working faster, only one second has elapsed, and so it seems that time has slowed.
When I’m home, alone, writing or not writing, I can hear my neighbors in their apartment. Our walls are thin. They interrupt my concentration every now and again. I’ve learned to live with them and they’ve learned to live with me, but I’ll hear them walking to their door, their noisy, creaky door, and I’ll wait for them to open it, maybe without even realizing I’m waiting for it, and they won’t open it. I lose my focus. Open the door! Their dog will bark and then suddenly fall silent mid-bark, and somewhere in my mind, I’ll wonder what happened and I’ll lose the sentence I was working on. There is a laugh, louder than normal, more hysterical, and something on the page eludes me. When did any of it happen? I don’t remember. I don’t even remember that any of it happened — I’ve made it all up. I forgot it almost at the same moment it happened. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. My memory, intent on preserving the things I am focused on, the things I’ve told myself are significant — the book — chooses not to recall everything else.
In a near-death experience, everything is significant. And, as one’s memory records everything, and everything, seeming significant, calls up a memory that, the brain thinks, might help to prevent or at least put off death, one’s life flashes before one’s eyes, or at least as much of one’s life as has any potential bearing on one’s present circumstances. It is not an elegy or a lamentation or even a memoir, it is an escape plan, a plot the brain hatches or anyway attempts to hatch. Somewhere in Scottie’s reflections on Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton is the key to saving his life.
…
In life you, the reader may suddenly hear a cry for help; you see only the window; you then look out and at first see nothing but moving traffic. But you do not hear the sound natural to these cars and buses; instead you hear still only the cry that first startled you. At least you find with your eyes the point from which the sound came; there is a crowd, and someone is now lifting the injured man, who is now quiet. But, now watching the man, you become aware of the din of traffic passing, and in the midst of its noise there gradually grows the piercing signal of the ambulance. At this your attention is caught by the clothes of the injured man: his suit is like that of your brother, who, you now recall, was due to visit you at two o’clock.
(V. I. Pudovkin, “Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film”)