Vertigo (1958) - Madeleine letter to Scottie

[@12classics39]

This scene really highlights that this is a mutual obsession. She’s just as fixated on him as he is on her. It’s not, as is often said in plot summaries, a one-way street on his part. She goes along with his efforts to change her into his idea of her because she also is clinging to an idea of him. They “fell in love” in a fantasy world, not in the real world.

[@scottanthony4511]

one of the greatest surprise scenes in the history of movies.

[@mirandac8712]

yeah I think it is the best one. I waited a long time to see this and I remember the uniquely weird feeling of the dissolve -- first of all, the shock of just remaining with judy, in the room, after scottie leaves -- you are truly not prepared for this switch of perspective. (obviously the director exploits this same thing with _psycho_ in two years.) but then the dissolve: I thought he was screwing w/the grammar of the dissolve as such, in a postmodern way, i.e. 'this is typically a cue to show a character's recollection -- how strange to do this with a random character that could have no possible knowledge of an event.' in other words I thought it was a weird 'authorial reveal' as theorists would put it. of course, there are plenty of examples of the greek anagnorisis in hitchcock before this -- especially 39 steps -- and after, and the matrix and fight club and sixth sense and empire strikes back are all great too but there's just something amazing about this film. I wish I could be like tarantino and be jaded by hitchcock b/c it seems more sensible, but every year I love him more and more.

[@davidjamessheets]

Very complex character, Judy. Scotty, as many men are, is in love with the illusion.

[@kevinscully1207]

This is perhaps the most tragic scene in the movie. She wanted to go, but she stayed to be with him.

[@happybkwrm]

The tragedy is an innocent woman was murdered.

[@plasticweapon]

@@happybkwrm the tragedy is that they spoiled the ending way before the climax.

[@acdragonrider]

@@plasticweapon It's not about us. It's about Scotty. It was a brilliant choice at least imo.

[@joshh4838]

@@plasticweapon I disagree. Hitchcock chose suspense over surprise.

[@isthme8103]

​@@plasticweaponThere is no spoiling in this movie because it's une œuvre d'art.

[@boneeatingsilicate580]

Love the expressive strings as she calls out her love and guilt..genius

[@boborrahood]

I was just messaging a friend about this scene and how The Letter is one of the best musical cues that tend to go unnoticed - since the narration needs to be louder than the music. But for soundtrack fans who have discovered this, it sounds fantastic when played louder, especially when the music is so exquisitely scored to go with her anguished admission of "love and guilt". As a musician, what makes Herrmann's music here so powerful is the sustained low F in the string basses while the chords above it change and progress to that magical "Wagnerian" chord at "I made the mistake... I fell in love..."

[@boneeatingsilicate580]

I've listened to this cue extensively and with high volume and, yes, while a low bass line chord plays consistently, then, one by one, paired strings begin to enter, each with different chords, some in parallel while others in contrast as if they are slowly running in to each other while also reaching higher and higher sonics..very Ives like but Herrmann makes it sound ethereal and not cacophonic like Ives would, its one of my all time favorite cues.

[@orangefox1231]

Am I the only who wished that it could end like this. Her either leaving or staying but the secret stays secret

[@matthewmccarty4892]

no, the rest of the movie after this was perfect, what made it so great

[@hipsterdoofus1026]

This is good because so far we’ve just seen things through Scottie’s gaze

[@jess21568]

He made no mistakes. I made the mistake, I fell in love, that wasn't part of the plan.

[@ve022]

in the book Scotty is a french lawyer.the husband wants him to witness a suicide but he flee from the area and so the police suspect the husbund.he is killed while trying to flee Paris,in german air raid in 1940.the lawyer strangles her from disappointment of not meeting the real Madeleine.very tragic

[@agenttheater5]

1:39 My guess is that that means that the Carlotta story itself is true but that her child grew up under a different name and so was lost to oblivion or to history and that basically the real wife was no relation of hers at all

[@gabriel000192]

Actually she was Judy Barton

[@edwardrichardson8254]

The only superfluous scene in this gem, and superfluous in the worst possible way in that it detracts from the movie's power. From this voice-over exposition forward we know that it was a setup, Scottie is thoroughly sane and Elster killed his wife (they even ham-handedly show us the killing in a tacky flashback). In the novel, all of this came out in the denouement exactly as you would want for the big finale, which is surprising because novels tend to digress and play these games (let's show Judy's struggles), movies don't have time to and they should not, especially this one. Hitchcock was, of course, smart enough to see this, he ordered this scene cut, head of Paramount Barney Balaban ordered it put back in. You want what Aristotle called "peripeteia" or "reversal" - that moment of maximum intensity where the narrative peaks and the truth is discovered (Think Oedipus Rex) and this scene trashes it, Judy is unmasked as an accomplice to murder, not some Kansas girl who functions as the fetishistic obsession of a heartbroken man who may be mentally unstable. You want her pulled up those tower stairs while doubting them both (Is he insane and maybe wrong about the necklace? Is she innocent or not?), have the reveal in the bell tower, then doubt again as she melts his will to expose the murder, then the fall.

[@sandcjw9901]

The first version of Vertigo I ever saw was a fanedit (the Joan Harrison cut) and all I knew was that a twist-revealing scene had been cut out, I had no idea what that scene was and what or when the twist would come. It was this scene. I was pretty damn suprised in the bell tower scene! I've heard one argument for keeping it: "suspense is better than surprise". But there is suspense of sorts in seeing Scottie's and Judy's weird game. Ultimately we'll never know for sure which cut is best since no-one can see both versions "for the first time". But I'm pretty glad I saw the cut version first!

[@ER1CwC]

​@@sandcjw9901 I have watched this film several times, and my judgment on this flipped. At first, I thought it would be better to have this scene out. But having it in is definitely the right call. The viewing experience is completely different. If this scene were out, one would spend the last 30 minutes wondering 'is she, or is she not?' (Question: did you feel distracted by that question when you watched that edited version? ) With this scene in, one is instead witnessing a ticking time-bomb. But it's different than his other ticking time-bombs because it doesn't get diffused. It blows up. And the viewer knows that it it is just a matter of time when will blow up. So actually I don't think the experience is one of suspense. Rather, it's one of tragedy and dread.

[@edwardrichardson8254]

​@@isthme8103 It's exposition and worse: it detracts from the climax. In fact, it sticks out like such a sore thumb I just decided to research it and FUCKING BAM - from the book "Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic" by Dan Auiler: "Judy's letter-writing scene - which gives away the Sim's secret two-thirds of the way through the film - was hotly debated until the very last minute" p. 115 "Then these provocative instructions about Judy's letter-writing scene appear in the notes: "Cut the three murder scenes over Judy's CU." Hitchcock was still worrying over the effect of the crucial revelation in the scene: Did he mean to cut the flashback? Or was he just calling for a change in approach - from superimposing the scenes to dissolving into them? "I remember there being some question about this scene. I don't think we wanted it in at first," Robertson remembered." p. 130 "Up until this final edit, the four- minute confession scene had not been a part of the picture." p. 160 "Years later, at a screening in New York, Samuel Taylor confessed how much he disliked that scene. In retrospect, he said, he would have preferred to have con- veyed the revelation in the way he'd initially imagined - through a scene be- tween Elster and Judy after the murder, the kind of scene he'd ultimately rejected because it seemed to "rob" Scottie of his central place in the film's viewpoint. Instead, "we did it in a very inept way. That letter scene startled me. How bad it is!" Taylor said." p. 161 BOOM MADDAFUKA! Don't ever, EVER debate movies w/ me dude. It's Hitchcock shown under the curtain working the bellows of afflatus. We don't want to know any of this until the CLIMAX which is why we have CLIMAXES in the West for 2000 years of drama. Scottie says all this in the BIG REVEAL that is no longer a big reveal because she's spilled the beans about all of it. It would be like Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct" writing a stupid letter halfway through saying "Yeah I did this and that... blah blah" but what's that do to the final shot of the ice pick under the bed. We do know he was pressured by some Film Code asshole all throughout the making of the movie, guy was bitching about everything from Midge's lingerie to the ending (THEY FILMED AN ALTERNATE ENDING FOR HIM SO WE KNOW THE BAD GUY GETS JUTSICE!). Far as we know this absurd letter scene could be him pressuring Hitch for the vamp to "confess." Book on the movie is free here: archive.org/details/vertigomakingofa00auil/page/160/mode/2up

[@boneeatingsilicate580]

Alls I know is thank god it remains, that underscore at that point by Herrmann is superb and beautiful.

[@tedbailey3673]

Evil . Puts even lower value than the husband, essentially none, on human life. Not a tragedy that Scotty doesn't come to forget the Other, forget the past, and love her for her, whatever that means, as she is truly worthless.

[@arnolt2590]

We know in the movie why Elster wanted to kill his wife ??

[@justhereforagoodtime88]

He would inherit her wealth

[@plasticweapon]

why the fuck would they give away the twist ending two thirds of the way through?!

[@acdragonrider]

You are missing the point. Hitchcock keys the audience into the truth so we will know and feel for Scotty and wonder how he will respond when he realizes. It's not a mystery. Its suspense.

[@davidpar2]

Well, he didn’t. The audience didn’t know that “Madeleine was going to die twice”

[@boneeatingsilicate580]

Hitchcock wanted the audience to go through the transformation and all the pain Scotty was experiencing

[@501rivet]

...possibly to give Judy some compassion from the viewers early on as to show she actually loved Scotty. Watching just the end tower scene, w/out knowledge of Judy's letter, I assumed Judy was faking her love for Scotty, begging Scotty to protect her (from going to jail). Now, realizing Judy actually loved Scotty, I feel really bad she got spooked by the shadow and fell to her death, though, even if she survived, Scotty may have never wanted the recreated fake Madelaine. A complex emotional whirlpool.

[@boborrahood]

As Hitchcock said to Truffaut in the famous interview book from 1966, What do we want- mystery revealed at the very end or revealed earlier, adding suspense? Or, as he said decades earlier, "There is no terror in the bang- only in the anticipation of it."