Cavell on Hitchcock.
Two Hitchcock’s suspense thrillers Vertigo and North by North West shift from the main female characters to the main male characters and seek education as part of their moral perfectionistic project. Furthermore, they achieve moral growth by going through the dangerous adventure with women, who supposedly play the role of educator for those men (depending on genre). Hence, Vertigo taking path of the Cavellian notion of melodrama and North by North West is a repercussion of the remarriage comedy genre.
North by North West is a 1959 American action thriller film starring Cary Grant (as Roger Thornhill) and Eva Marie Saint as Eve Kendall) fits Cavellian definition of remarriage, in fact, the film possesses necessary features of genre but only for a male character, in opposition to previous members of genre.
“I will wind up saying that the North by Northwest derives from the genre of remarriage, or rather from whatever it is that genre is derived, which means to me that its subject is the legitimizing of marriage, as if the pair’s adventures are trails of their suitability for that condition. Perhaps this only signifies that North by Northwest is a romance” (Hitchcock Reader, chapter 19 ‘North by Northwest’ by S. Cavell, pp. 250-255).
The main protagonist advertising executive Roger is indolent man of New York city, who is drinking, best friending his mother and stealing taxi cabs from people on daily bases. Assertive, energetic and persistent he would never expect his life changing its rout, until he was kidnapped and lured into the story. Under covering lies layer by layer Roger involves into dangerous situation and at the end he is awarded with what is, in Cavellian terms metamorphose or re-birth is, and marriage with a woman (or rather finds out about her), who is able to provide education for him. “It is in any case the only one of Hitchcock’s romantic thrillers in which the adventurous pair is shown to have married. It is also the only one in which the man of that pair is shown to have mother – a mother, needless to say, whom he is shown to leave, and to leave running” (Hitchcock Reader, chapter 19 ‘North by Northwest’ by S. Cavell, pp. 250-255).
As the most of the remarriage comedies often portray a father of the heroine, a stable and supportive figure, who is often takes side of the daughter, North by North West features some kind of mama’s boy, a man in his late 40’s, whose mother often acts as a caretaker, indeed after two divorces. Being mother-bonded is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness, a mother-bonded man is seen to give control of his own life to his mother. “The film opens with an ageless male identifying himself first of all as a son” (Hitchcock Reader, chapter 19 ‘North by Northwest’ by S. Cavell, pp. 250-255). As movie develops, Roger loses certain dependence (on his mother, as he runs away from her and hit man in a hotel lobby and alcohol (which is probably a consequence of the forcible drinking that nearly caused his death). When he finally understood who Eve really is, he is more or less ready to marry her, a woman, who seem to be ready and already provided education for him. The adventure as a whole and her participation in it influence Roger’s metamorphoses.
According to Cavell, couple’s goal is the “legitimizing of marriage, the declaration that happiness is still to be won there, there or nowhere, and that America is a place, fictional no doubt, in which that happiness can be found.” (CP, Cavell on North by Northwest, p. 55) Structure of remarriage comedy usually sets two principles: the achieving of a new innocence and the establishing or reestablishing of an identity. Two other features, so-called capacities “for adventure and for improvisation”. Virtues that involved with these capacities, allowed them “to become at home in the world, to establish the world as a home.” Living together on the road, as if loving was the finding of a direction for them. Their ability to escape on Mountain Rushmore comes from their adventurousness and Roger understands that anything can become an adventure with Eve.
“The candidates for remarriage must, further, not be virgins, they must have a past together, and they must talk well and wittily about marriage, especially about whether they believe in marriage.” The couple’s past in a film is only one night, “but it proves ample enough.” “One or both of the pair must maintain an openness to childhood, so it turns out to be to Thornhill’s spiritual credit that although in the course of the film he becomes big he remains a boy” (CP, Cavell on North by Northwest, p. 56).
“The man in remarriage comedies is responsible for the education of the woman as part of the process of rescuing or redeeming her from a state in which she keeps herself; this may be characterized as a coldness or an inability to feel…” Further, Cavell argues that Roger forces Eve which he identifies with a statue (throwback to the Philadelphia Story), becoming a “real woman”. In fact, it is more evident that Eve is the one who educates. Roger appears to be unaccomplished and he would remain to be that way until the adventure occur. Danger of the situation makes him manifest certain ingenuity and bravery, qualities, which maybe he would never discover living life that he used to. Eve herself only pretends to be cold, and it correlates to Roger’s second impression of the blond double agent, but it changes as he discovers that she is working for CIA. Cavell’s interpretation of Eve’s “becoming a real woman” quite misinterprets plot, because as it becomes clear for Roger and viewer altogether, she is courageously living adventurous life and seemingly ready for marriage.
The goal of remarriage comedy requires a new creation of the new woman, or in this case a man. “Here, accordingly, it is the man who undergoes death and revival and whose physical identity is insisted upon by the camera.” Cavell says that comedies of remarriage are certain about what it is about the man that fits him to educate and hence rescue the woman, that is, chosen by woman to educate her and thereby to achieve happiness for them both (as in Philadelphia story, Lisa had chosen Mike in spite the fact that he “has to learn a lot”, even if it’s not really clear that her story turns out to be a remarriage comedy or a melodrama of an unknown women). Eve chose Roger because she sees his good side and knows that he can learn to become a suitable partner for her, but she also understands that he still has to learn and she could navigate him in doing so. As often played in remarriage comedies, final isolation of the couple at the end of the picture serves to legitimize marriage without the world in secluded space (as It Happened One Night).
Cavell's derivation of remarriage comedy from its sources in classical comedy and his subsequent derivation of the melodrama of the unknown woman from remarriage comedy, formations which are describable as a matter of conversation or interpretation or negation: "Let us think of the common inheritance of the members of a genre as a story, call it a myth. The members of a genre will be interpretations of it, or to use Thoreau's word for it, revisions of it, which will also make them interpretations of one another" (PH, p. 31). Interpretations where a feature in one instance takes the place of, compensates for, a related feature present in some other version of the story. Negations, however, when the revision or substitution in question finally changes the story, makes it some other story. Thus remarriage comedy derives from or interprets classical comedy, for example, by replacing the marriage ceremony which typically concludes classical comedy story with a threat or fact of divorce between characters somewhat older and more martially experienced. "The central idea," writes Cavell is "that the validity or bond of marriage is assured, even legitimized, not by church or state or sexual compatibility" but "by something I call the willingness for remarriage, a way of continuing to affirm the happiness of one's initial leap. As if the chance of happiness exists only when it seconds itself. In classical comedy people made for one another find one another; in remarriage comedy people who have found one another find that they are made for each other. In a number of instances this recovery of identity is expressed or trooped by incest — as when, in The Awful Truth, Lucy Warriner proves her commitment to marriage by posing as her husband's sister, as if she and Jerry had "grown up together," "thus staking a final claim to have known him intimately forever" (PH, p. 60).
The women in melodramas of the unknown women, like the women in the comedies, demand equality, shared education, and transfiguration, exemplifying for Cavell a moral perfectionism he identifies as Emersonian. But unlike the comedies, which portray a quest for a shared existence of expressiveness and joy, the melodramas trace instead the woman's recognition that in this quest she is isolated. Part of the melodrama concerns the various ways the men in the films (and the audiences of the films) interpret and desire to force the woman's consequent inaccessibility.
“Vertigo seems at first to be about a man’s impotence in the face of, or faced with the task of sustaining, his desire; perhaps, on second thought, about the precariousness of human verticality altogether. But it turns out to be about the specific power of a man’s fantasy to cause him not merely to forgo reality – that consequence is as widespread as the sea – but to gear every instant of his energy toward a private alteration of reality” (TWV, p.85). Scotty’s alteration of reality opens up for notion of melodrama of the unknown woman in Hickok’s thriller, a woman, whose personality is completely ignored by the man she loves. Scotty’s illusion doesn’t let him appreciate the reality, his obsession with idea of Madeleine, won’t let him recognize who Judy really is.
The melodrama of the unknown woman derives from remarriage comedy by women’s metamorphoses, which takes place “elsewhere” than the world of man. Often metamorphosis is less a matter by itself than identity, an identity often signed to the world as a matter of dress. Hence, metamorphoses of two kinds take place in the film: Malden/Judy’s “forced” metamorphose, as she merely comes back to her natural state and Scottie’s, which rather consist of three stages (he learns about Judy, overcomes vertigo and makes an attempt to understand her before she died). “A main protagonist, Scotty, seems to be comfortable surviving in a “world of women” … Within Stewart’s famous “boyishness” is also a barely submerged “girlishness,” which marks him as the “feminine man of melodrama,” claims Leland Poague in Framing Hitchcock, Engendering Vertigo (p. 261).
Cavell’s spectator is stimulated to contemplate a range of ideas and concepts while viewing the film: ‘fantasy’, ‘science’, ‘civility’, ‘destiny’, ‘impotence’, ‘desire’, and ‘reality’. For Cavell, a good film like Vertigo stretches the mind and inevitably encourages the spectator to challenge their presumptions about the meaning of ideas or concepts. He continues: “It is a poor idea of fantasy which takes it to be a world apart from reality, a world clearly showing its unreality. Fantasy is precisely what reality can be confused with. It is through fantasy that our conviction of the worth of reality is established; to forgo our fantasies would be to forgo our touch with the world” (TWV, p.85).
Cavell seems initially to announce what the film is about ‘the power of fantasy’ but then he refines the idea to be about ‘a man’s impotence in the face of his desire. In turn, this leads to a second thought that the film might be about ‘the precariousness of human verticality altogether’. For Cavell, Vertigo is a philosophical melodrama, but so is viewing.
Vertigo – Hitchcock is the film’s primary token to be unknown. Vertigo enacts a melodramatic victory of recognition over repression. Scottie is charged with delivering the “aria of divorce” normally assigned in melodrama to the unknown women (he is angry and bewildered sense of victimization is fully equal to Paula’s in Gaslight), but also creates the aura of villainy and obsession (Gregory from Gaslight). His willingness (or desire?) to punish her creates sense of his insanity. Scottie feminine status can be derived alike from Vertigo’s inheritance of melodrama. Scottie is both “the feminine man” and the “unknown woman” whose silence is broken in delivering the “aria of divorce” that virtually defines the genre. He is dwelling in a world of women, especially in his dreams.
If North by North West is deserves membership in remarriage comedy genre with only deviation of male protagonist, Vertigo creates more complex situation, where main male character seeks education, but it’s not very clear whereas he accomplished it or not. Contrariety of Scotty character challenges an attempt to claim Vertigo’s belonging to the genre.
