I’ve seen Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo many, many times, but for whatever reason I’ve never assigned specific meanings to the color scheme the way this Society of Geeks guy does here. (This video essay was posted last March — I only just watched it this morning.) I don’t recall Robin Wood or any other Hitchcock scholar assessing the meanings of green (Madeline Elster‘s personal color as well as a symbol of otherworldly, ghostly, deathly chill-vibes) and red (erotic desire, sexual obsession, the abandonment of decorum) in this classic 1958 film. Not to mention the uses of yellow and blue. Nor can I figure out the origin of the narrator’s fascinating accent. This essay works as a companion piece to Nerdwriter’s riff about Hitchcock’s careful blocking of scenes.
