…
Far from becoming clearer, things now appeared to me more incomprehensible than ever. The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually happened in this or that way.
(Sebald, Vertigo)
…
Thanatos can assume any form it wishes; it can kill eros, the life drive, and then simulate it. Once thanatos does this to you, you are in big trouble; you suppose you are driven by eros but it is thanatos wearing a mask.
(Dick, VALIS)
…
Isn’t Judy’s death precisely what Scottie wants out of his visit to San Juan Bautista? Though he is, one supposes, trying to correct his previous mistake, he certainly never explicitly says so; what he says is “There’s just one thing I’ve got to do, then I’ll be free.” It almost isn’t necessary to say this statement can be read several different ways, and only one is positive — Judy knows it. The one thing that is absolutely clear is that Scottie is trying to recreate exactly the previous visit. Though this time he can climb to the top and look out, everything else must be as it was. If that is so, mustn’t it end with “Madeleine’s” death? There is no other possible ending that would satisfy him, it seems. He may or may not believe he is going to rectify the past — he does, as far as he is concerned, by overcoming his acrophobia — but what we discover is that he can only rectify his past, not Judy’s, not Madeleine’s, as though once a witness to her death, he will always remain just a witness, as though all of the events that follow take place behind glass. Just as he was powerless to help the woman he believed to be Madeleine then, he will not be able to help the woman he believes to be Madeleine now (here, in this final scene, is the only time he will call Judy Madeleine). If he were out to rectify the past, he would not bring Judy to San Juan Bautista. If he were out to rectify the past, he would not bring Judy to the top of the tower. If he were out to rectify the past, he would leave well enough alone. It always seems possible to love someone for who they are, even while it is impossible to love them for anything but what one believes them to be.
…
Of course, nothing so bad happened or even could have happened at San Juan Bautista, because there is no tower there. There was once a steeple, but it burned in a fire. Hitchcock’s tower is a special effect, a combination of matte painting, scale models, and trick photography. The tower is an illusion, Hitchcock’s fiction. My girlfriend and I looked up into the blue of the sky. A wispy cloud passed. She told me she was cold. We got back in the car, started on our way back to San Francisco. Across the lawn, another couple was fighting with each other. Their voices were not loud, but they were intense, meant not to carry but definitely meant to be heard. Because of the way the man held the woman, it was impossible to tell who was pulling who, but they were stumbling towards the church, almost as if by accident. My girlfriend called to me from the car.
…
Every effort to understand destroys the object studied in favor of another object of a different nature; this second object requires from us a new effort which destroys it in favor of a third, and so on and so forth until we reach the one lasting presence, the point at which the distinction between meaning and the absence of meaning disappears: the same point from which we began.
(Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques)
…
Another inquest, surely. Even if there is no corresponding breakdown, there must be another inquest. And can it go any differently than did the first? “The law has little to say on the subject of things left undone.” Vertigo itself is such a thing, it seems to me, for here we are, on the brink of beginning things again, and yet here the narrative ends. One might object that, with Judy dead, there can be no repetition, but that supposes Judy’s letter is real, something I cannot believe in myself.
…
Judy screams when Elster tosses Madeleine’s body off the tower. Madeleine, dead, makes no sound at all. The policeman screams. Judy screams, but she may only scream at the sight of the nun, not on her way down (the camera angle prevents us from knowing). Whatever is going through their minds as they fall, they have no words for it.
…
Not a look of triumph, but not one of remorse, either. Awe.
…
When a man falls over a cliff, he almost certainly smiles before he hits the ground, because that’s what his own demon tells him to do.
(Ossip Zadkine)
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