Wow! I really enjoyed today’s Rose Cafe. Sara’s talk about melancholy brought together so many apparently disparate subjects and stories (Hamlet, Vertigo, humorism, etc.) and added to the meaning of each of them. Vertigo, for example. When I first saw Vertigo, I have to admit I wasn’t a huge fan. It felt too melodramatic to me, and there wasn’t anything very redemptive about the ending. The suggestion that the story line between Scottie and Judy was a kind of Freudian fantasy fulfilled was pretty eye-opening to me. I had interpreted Scottie’s attempt to force Judy to (re)become Madeleine as an attempt to affirm her identity, so that he could be with her in the present – as Judy or as Madeleine, just to be with her was the important thing. I didn’t think that maybe restoring Madeleine, as he knew her, was more important than confirming the two women were one and the same. I think that reading is really interesting, and it definitely does a better job of drawing in Scottie’s melancholy at being forced off the police force (a melancholy which I don’t think I explicitly acknowledged when I watched the movie) than my own interpretation. While Vertigo is still not my favorite, maybe I’ll give it another watch now!