Vertigo

  Vertigo

    Part Six : Madeleine's Memory


Before Watching
After the fall

Read this short review of the film and replace the underlined words with other words that mean the same or similar :

The film was based on the novel D'entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, but Hitchcock, as always, took charge of the story and gave his picture all the hallmarks of his own personal style. He cast the supremely popular and likeable star of the era, James Stewart, to be at the center of the story. Hitchcock used Stewart's accessible, modest, everyman charm to entrap the audience in baffling puzzles


While Watching

  1. Watch the following sequence and order the following events :

    • ___ Scottie gives Madeleine her dress
    • ___ Scottie drinks his cup of coffee
    • ___ Madeleine wakes up
    • ___ Madeleine talks in her sleep
    • ___ Scottie answers the telephone
    • ___ Scottie puts some logs on the fire
    • ___Madeleine gets dressed

  2. Complete the following dialogue :

    Scottie : You'd better.............
    Madeleine : What am I ................? What............?

  3. Answer the following questions :
    1. Does Madeleine remember anything about what happened?
    2. How does she explain what happened?
    3. Why does she often go to the place where she fell in?
    4. What does Scottie ask her?
    5. What does Madeleine complain about?
    6. What does Madeleine say about the art gallery?
    7. What does she ask for?
    8. Why is she happy he didn't take her home
    9. What is Scottie's real name and what do people call him
    10. Why does she say people shouldn't live alone?
    11. Has Madeleine ever fallen into water before?
    12. Who telephones and what do they talk about?
    13. What does Midge think when she sees Madeleine's car?

After Watching

Read the following extract about the actress who plays Midge and answer the questions that follow:

Barbara Bel Geddes, familiar to the 70s television audiences as the warm-hearted, strong, but eternally disappointed matriarch of the Dallas family, played the good girl in Vertigo - the sweet-as-apple-pie charmer Stewart is supposed to love, but is polar opposite to the Novak character's mysterious, obsessive attraction

  • What about Midge's character is opposite to that of Madeleine?
  • What do the underlined phrases mean?

    Created and Maintained by: Graham Stanley
    All Lesson Plans Copyright Graham Stanley, 1999
    ...but feel free to use them with your classes.