Hitch on the couch

Perhaps it was Bernard Herrmann's centennial that has brought the master back into the zeitgeist (or maybe everyone's reading Vertigo: the Making of a Hitchcock Classic on their Kindle?), Hitch music this week has also been of a more serious nature (more serious than Hitch "hustlin"?).  This is from luckydube.net.  You can find the rest of this fascinating post by clicking the post's headline.

Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958) is driven by the utter determination of protagonist Scottie Ferguson, who’s ambition to seek the truth behind the mystery of possessed female protagonist Madeleine, develops the plot and enforces the theme of romantic delusions. In order to understand the plot’s driving force, it is important to scrutinise the personalities of the characters behind the determinant of the narrative. Freud’s analysis of the structure of personality illustrates that the Ego is a part of the psyche that mediates between the internal self and external environment, which also represents common sense. The id is the source of psychological energy that represents the animal instincts of a person. The superego mediates between the two applying morals, rules and values. In applying this to the personalities of Hitchcock’s films, the Id seems to be the dominant force of the protagonists’s personalities. Protagonists, Scottie in Vertigo, like L.B Jeffries in Rear Window, similar to that of Marion Crane in Psycho, all abandon their rational, safe and moral alternatives to follow their instinctive, sexual, delusional desires which in turn, enforces the story and makes for an interesting plot. Such behaviour can be described as an obsessive-compulsive disorder where the protagonist continuously pursues the antagonist with the intention of sexual closure. Marion Crane leaves her steady job and becomes obsessed with eloping. She steals forty thousand dollars from her boss in order to begin a new life with her lover Sam Loomis. On her pursuit of a new life, Marion drives out of her old familiar town and enters an estranged environment where lies the Bates hotel. This is where she is murdered by Norman Bates and never gets the chance to start a new life. The obsessive-compulsive disorders are flaws intended by the writer or director to enhance the vulnerability of the protagonist. It appears that Hitchcock builds tension by highlighting paranoia where he has developed flawed characters, similar to Aristotle’s idea of a tragic hero, so that their flaws will be the ultimate downfall of the characters themselves and the ending results in tragedy.

The beginning of the film shows Jeff hanging at a huge height from a roof. . .