In Vertigo, the first image that you see is the police officer falling off a building to his death. This scene is repeated several more times during the movie, when Madeleine falls to her death out of the church tower, and also at the end of the movie when Judy falls from the same tower. Everyone that died in the movie was either thrown or fell from the top of a building. All these deaths lead back to the beginning of the movie when we hear that Scottie suffers from acrophobia, and the police officer, trying to save Scottie from falling, actually falls to his own death. Modleski notes that Scottie is " caught up in repetition, like Judy/Madeleine/Carlotta- (Modleski, 98). It seems as though every girl that Scottie falls for ends up hurting him. .
Repetition is also present in Judy's character and how she is made-over twice to look and act like Madeleine. The audience is unable to see the first transformation, but the second transformation takes place right before our eyes. Modleski explains, " Judy is the "original" woman, who will soon be remade (for the second time) into the fully fetishized and idealized, "constructed" object of male desire and male "design"."(Modleski, 96) The audience is given the opportunity to see why Gavin chose Judy to play the role of Madeleine. Hitchcock proves to the audience that once a man is truly in love with a woman, her spirit will live on forever in his soul. The audience is able to understand exactly how much Scottie loved and cared for Madeleine. Modleski provides an explanation of this action by stating " repetition which, as Freud has shown, is linked to unfreedom, to masochism, and to death." (Modleski, 98) This just proves Modleski's point that Vertigo, along with most of Hitchcock's other films, is a movie about male dominance. Modleski has come to the conclusion that " Vertigo, like all narrative films, is "cut to the measure of male desire" because it is from the male point of view- (Modleski, 87).
