The Philosophical Hitchcock The Philosophical Hitchcock Vertigo and the Anxieties of Unknowingness Robert B. Pippin The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2017 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-22650364-6 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-22650378-3 (e-book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226503783.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pippin, Robert B., 1948– author. Title: The philosophical Hitchcock : Vertigo and the anxieties of unknowingness / Robert B. Pippin. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017001242 | ISBN 9780226503646 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226503783 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Vertigo (Motion picture : 1958) | Philosophy in motion pictures. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.P42 P56 2017 | DDC 791.43/72—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001242 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). In memory of Victor Perkins You sort of forget you’re you. —Emmy, Shadow of a Doubt It’s quite remarkable to discover that one isn’t what one thought one was. —Dr. Peterson, Spellbound Who comes to seek the living among the dead? —Luke 24:5 Contents Acknowledgments Prologue: Film and Philosophy Introduction: The Issue 1. The Opening Credits 2. The Opening Chase 3. Introducing Midge 4. Gavin Elster and the Scheme 5. Ernie’s 6. Pop Leibel 7. In the Bay and in Scottie’s Apartment 8. Two Are Going Somewhere 9. Semper virens 10. Midge and Carlotta 11. The “Suicide” 12. The Coroner’s Inquest 13. Scottie’s Dream 14. Music Therapy 15. Finding Judy 16. The Transformation 17. The Revelation 18. “I Loved You So, Madeleine” Concluding Remarks: Moral Suspension Footnotes Index Plates Acknowledgments I began writing this book while teaching a summer seminar in Switzerland with my friend and colleague Jim Conant, and I finished it sometime after we had taught a course together at the University of Chicago on Hitchcock’s American films. I want to express my thanks to Professor Katia Saporiti of the University of Zurich for the invitation to deliver the seminar, and to the participants in the seminar for our lively discussions. I am yet again, as with my other two books about film, very grateful to Jim for our conversations about Hitchcock, film aesthetics, and much else over the last twenty years. I have also had the privilege of presenting material from this book in lectures at Beloit College, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Berkeley, and Stanford. The discussions after the lectures were invariably lively, thoughtful, and very helpful, and I thank those audiences. I have also been helped by generous comments from Dan Morgan, Wendy Doniger, Mark Jenkins, Paul Kottman, and the late Victor Perkins, and by a number of acute comments from Fred Rush. I wrote the final draft over part of the summer at a farmhouse in the Hudson River Valley. I am happy to express how very much I have gained from frequent conversations there about the film and related matters with Michael Fried and Ruth Leys, and how grateful I am for their valuable comments and for their friendship. This book is dedicated to the memory of Victor Perkins, who died in July of 2016. I had been a dedicated admirer of Victor’s work on film since I first read Film as Film many years ago, and I then read everything else he wrote. I got to know him personally about a decade ago in Chicago, and we stayed in touch after that through correspondence and occasional meetings, in Warwick and then for the last time in Munich. We shared a love for Nicholas Ray, Max Ophüls, and Hitchcock, among others, and he was always as generous and insightful a correspondent about drafts of articles and general issues as anyone I have ever known. He was also among the most humane, kind, and forthright people I have ever met. To say of someone that he was a “lovely person” can sound quite indeterminate, but anyone who had the great good fortune to have known Victor will know exactly what I mean. White Oak House Buskirk, New York Buskirk, New York July 2016