gn to women. The color of Madeleine’s robe after she plunges into the bay is red. And finally the color of the pendant necklace, which makes Scottie so angry with Judy, is red. Red seems to be Scottie’s theme before Madeleine and vertigo as red indicates his reluctance toward women which describes Scottie up to this point in his life.The color yellow also surfaces in Vertigo through Midge. Her studio is bright which is an indication of her sunny personality. Yellow often indicates caution, but in this case it indicates a slow progression or mediocrity of Scottie’s love for Midge. The color purple also makes an appearance in the film by seeming to be associated with Judy. However, when Scottie and Judy kiss the camera makes a dizzying pan and the color shifts to green which foreshadows Scottie’s discovery of Judy’s alter personality of Madeleine. The camera circles around the both of them, and as it does so, images of San Juan Batista emerge from behind them, as if to indicate that the past has caught up with the present, and later will engulf them to a powerfully emotional and tragic end. When Scottie sees Judy on the street for the first time the viewer has been set up to share Scottie’s cognitive dissonance, that is she looks like but doesn’t look like Madeleine. The curious sensations which occur during the last half of the film during Madeleine’s rebirth might rest in Vertigo’s careful manipulation of cognitive dissonance as we compare Madeleine with all her variations: Judy from Kansas; Midge; Midge in her self portrait of Carlotta; Carlotta in her painting and Carlotta in Scottie’s dream.Scottie, an established symbol of the normal, all-American male, represents the normal man who cracks under the pressure of his placement within an extraordinary set of circumstances. Many key sequences, for example, are mysteriously shrouded in cloud, or a dreamlike green light t...
