Key points to revise
In the exam, you must discuss specific examples: micro-analyse the key scenes as part of your revision.
Consider:
- How does the film address the issues of masculinity and femininity?
- To what extent can we analyse the film in the light of Hitchcock’s body of work as an auteur?
- Analyse the film’s concern with spectatorship: voyeurism, subjectivity, perception, scopophilia, the gaze, etc
- How is the audience’s experience of the events in the film linked to Scottie’s perception and how does Hitchcock achieve this?
- Is the film misogynistic?
- How valid is a psychoanalytic approach to the film?
- How does Hitchcock explore the themes of past/present, haunting and posession in different ways?
- What is meaningful about the casting and performance in the film?
- What is interesting about the way that the film is structured?
- What role does music play in steering our perception of events, mood and emotion in the film?
- What is the relevance of some of the recurring imagery in the film: the spiral, eyes, red/green, framing of characters in windows, doorways and mirrors?
- How does micro-analysing any given scene link to the film’s overall concerns?
Click on the acrophobic nightmare
to go to the main Vertigo page
Click on the archetypal Hitchcock
Blonde to go to the A2 Revision page
Click on the image of defeated
masculinity to go to the Year 13 page
