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"False ending" scenes: Scottie's near-departures
Three times in Vertigo, Scottie starts to leave a room, only to return. Each return gets him deeper into his involvement. |
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| In Midge's apartment: "What did you mean, there's no losing it . . . the acrophobia? . . . I think I can lick it." | In Gavin Elster's office: "I didn't mean to be that rough. . . ." [Elster:] "Do you think I made it up?" [Scottie:] "No. . . ." |
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| In Judy's hotel room: "Will you have dinner with me? . . . Will you, for me?" | ||||||||||||||||||||
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McKittrick Hotel: the uncanny
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| Viewers and critics concerned with narrative logic focus on the McKittrick Hotel scene, where Madelyn apparently enters the hotel without being seen by the desk clerk and then vanishes without being seen by the clerk or Scottie. Was the hotel clerk part of Elster's plot? Did Madelyn sneak out by a back stairway? More likely, this scene introduces an irreducible "uncanny" element to Madelyn. From another perspective, the hotel scene is an example of Hitchcock's "icebox factor": an anomaly that, assuming the director has done his job well, won't be noticed by the audience until the movie is over and they're discussing it in the kitchen. | ||||||||||||||||||||