Vertigo:Mc Kittrick Hotel?
Tero Rantaruikka
What is the puprpose of the hotel sceen where Madeline dissapears from
the hotel. Is the woman in the hotel part of the scheem to mess Scottys
head, why does Scotty look so suprised when he looks at the lamp in the
ceiling and why doesn't Hitch explain all this?
Bud Lieht
Tero Rantaruikka wrote in message <359BC5DC...@pp.inet.fi>...
Theories:
1) A simple red herring.
2) An intentional Hitchcock plot device to add to the aura of mystery around
Madeline.
3) A hint to the later plot twist - Scotty's Madeline isn't the real
Madeline.
Steve
Well, the hotel helps Elster with his story of Carlotta Valdes. It is
explained in the film that the McKittrick hotel is the old Valdes
residence.
BillyBond
>From: Steve <rat...@hotmail.com>
>Well, the hotel helps Elster with his story of Carlotta Valdes. It is
>explained in the film that the McKittrick hotel is the old Valdes
>residence.
This is true, but really isn't an answer to Tero's question -- one that has
occurred to me more than once.
The question is: why doesn't the old lady behind the desk know "Madeline"
is upstairs? And how does she get out of the building without Scottie seeing
her? I >suspect< the old lady was paid off, but there's no good hint in the
movie.
Bill Warren
Steve
Well, here's another thought... (this is assuming the old was NOT paid off), it
took the old lady a bit of time to notice that Scottie had entered. And she did
seem a bit aloof. Perhaps, if carefully done, one could enter the hotel without
being noticed.
Doesn't the old lady mention the only entrance in & out is through the front
door. If that's true, then Scottie would have seen her go out. And in this
case, it would be Hitchcock suspending reality to further the suspense of
Madeline and the Carlotta Valdes angle.
Yet, if reality is not suspended, then it would seem the old lady was tipped off,
otherwise it would be physically impossible for Madeline to enter and leave
without being noticed.
...some thoughts to mull over
Steve
Michael Gottuso
It's not in the script or anything like that. Just my theory -
I think that Madeleine may have rented two rooms using two different
names (Madeleine and Judy) possibly with Elster's help. The hotel
looks very run down and possibly very cheap to rent so I wouldn't be
surprised if that was the original place where Judy lived before moving
to the Empire Hotel. I don't think Judy would have stayed in the same
hotel before and after the Madeleine murder. So its very possible that
after Scottie entered the hotel, Madeleine sneaked in a different
room(Judy's?). Perhaps the old lady never realized the connection
between those two- Madeleine and Judy. Now about the disappearance of
the green Jacquar - Elster picked it up or maybe one of his workers or
friends did.
Hitchock is known for leaving holes in his plots.... and the Mckittrick
Hotel mystery is one of them..I just filled in that "hole" with my own
thoughts...thats the fun part of it.
Hughes
>Hitchock is known for leaving holes in his plots.... and the Mckittrick
>Hotel mystery is one of them..
True, there are a very large amount of implausibilities in Hitchcock
films - I guess the film's plot was by no means the most important
part to him. Nonetheless, I don't feel that this McKittrick Hotel
incident is in this category.
Scottie, at this point in the story, is being bombarded with false
facts about some weird *ghost story*. Until now, it seems a relatively
pedestrian affair, with Scottie learning second-hand about the
possession of a young woman by her mad ancestor. The McKittrick Hotel
incident is not only a quasi-supernatural puzzle for the film's main
protagonist but also for the audience. It is his (and, just as
importantly our) first real *baptism* into this hypnotic world.
It seems to me that the posts I've read in this thread must resemble
Scottie's own musings on the topic, both immediately (i.e. directly
after that scene) and much later, after the film ends.
Fergal Hughes.
--
However, we mustn't despair ... not actually despair ... no desperandum.
muf...@labyrinth.net.au
bill...@aol.com (BillyBond) wrote:
>
> >From: Steve <rat...@hotmail.com>
>
> >Well, the hotel helps Elster with his story of Carlotta Valdes. It is
> >explained in the film that the McKittrick hotel is the old Valdes
> >residence.
>
> occurred to me more than once.
> The question is: why doesn't the old lady behind the desk know "Madeline"
> is upstairs? And how does she get out of the building without Scottie seeing
> her? I >suspect< the old lady was paid off, but there's no good hint in the
> movie.
This matter is answered in the article "Out of Hitchcock's Filing Cabinet"
that's on the Alfred Hitchcock Scholars/'MacGuffin' Web site.
Cheers - Ken Mogg (Ed., 'The MacGuffin')
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin
>
> Bill Warren
>
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muf...@labyrinth.net.au
Following up my post here earlier today, I've tonight added an item to the
Hitchcock Scholars/'MacGuffin' Web site as follows, with more to come there
tomorrow. (There's plenty of other good material currently in the "Editor's
Day" segment, including a keen insight into THE LADY VANISHES from JLK in
California. Also, the "News and Comment" segment should be of interest,
including a piece on Camille Paglia and THE BIRDS.)
July 14 Someone was asking about the McKittrick Hotel scene in Vertigo
(1958), and I referred them to the article "Out of Hitchcock's Filing
Cabinet" that's on this Web site. There, I show how the basic idea of
Madeleine's 'disappearing act' comes from the Curtis Bernhardt film Conflict
(1945), starring Humphrey Bogart. (In both films, it's a trick, a put-up job,
with the respective landladies in on the act - literally an act, since the
landladies and the respective women who disappear are playing roles and are
presumably well-paid for their trouble.) But there are other, related
precedents. Notably, German ex-patriate Bernhardt had made an earlier film,
Carrefour/Crossroads, in 1938, in France. Briefly, the plot of that film
concerns amnesia. The film's evil mastermind (Charles Vanel) learns of a
diplomat who has lost part of his memory, and sees in this an opportunity for
blackmail. He employs an elderly actress to impersonate the diplomat's mother
and help convince him that he has committed a crime. In other words,
Bernhardt's Conflict was drawing on a device from his earlier film. Next,
that film was remade in Hollywood in 1942, as Crossroads, when it was
directed by Jack Conway for MGM. The evil mastermind figure was played by
Basil Rathbone, and his victim by William Powell (one of Hitchcock's
favourite actors). You could say with some validity that Rathbone is a
predecessor of Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) in Vertigo, and William Powell a
forerunner of that film's Scottie (James Stewart), whom Elster dupes by
playing on his infirmity - not amnesia in Scottie's case, but acrophobia
(fear of heights). This is all part of a still larger melodrama (and German
Expressionism) tradition, as I show in another article, "The Fragments of the
Mirror: Vertigo and its Sources", originally published in 'MacGuffin' 11, and
which I'm currently revising for publication elsewhere. More later.
- Ken Mogg (Ed., 'The MacGuffin').
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html