alfred hitchcock's vertigo (1958)

264 Pages·2016·62.63 MB·English

MADELEINE TIME:
ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S VERTIGO (1958), PERCY ADLON’S
CÉLESTE (1980), AND CHANTAL AKERMAN’S LA CAPTIVE (2000)

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

2016

ALISON M CRIDDLE

SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES
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List of Contents

List of Figures…...……………………………..……………………...…...........3

Abstract………………………………………………………….…………........4

Declaration…………………………………...………………………………….5

Copyright Statement…………………………………………………..………...6

Acknowledgments………………………………………………..……………..7

Author’s Note…………………………………………………………………...8

Introduction:
Three Proustian Women…………………………………….………………......9

Chapter 1:
‘What is (a) Madeleine?’: Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958).………………..28

Chapter 2:
“I Hold Myself Ready for Him”: Reluctant Time in Percy Adlon’s Céleste
(1980)…………………………………………………………………………..84

Chapter 3:
“That Girl Will Bring You Nothing But Trouble”: Chantal Akerman’s La
Captive (2000)………………………………………….…………………….116

Conclusion:
‘Seek? More Than That: Create’……………………………………………..181

Bibliography………………………………………………..………………...202

Appendices…………………………………………………………………...225

Figures……………………………………………………………………..…236

Word Count (inclusive of footnotes): 73577
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List of Figures

1. Robert Altman, 3 Women (1977), Final Scene……………………….237
2. Chris Marker, Immemory, CD-Rom (1999), ‘What is a Madeleine?’..238
3. Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958), Scottie, Madeleine, and the Portrait of
Carlotta……………………………………………………………….239
4. Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958), Madeleine at Ernie’s…………….240
5. Douglas Gordon, Feature Film (1999), Conlon’s Hand..……………241
6. Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958), Scottie’s Apartment……………...242
7. Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (1983), Madeleine’s Sequoia Tree from
Vertigo…………………………………………………………….….243
8. Percy Adlon, Céleste (1980), Céleste Waiting……………………….244
9. Percy Adlon, Céleste (1980), Proust and Céleste.…………………....245
10. Percy Adlon, Céleste (1980), Céleste and Concertina Manuscript......246
11. Percy Adlon, Céleste (1980), Céleste at Proust’s Deathbed……...…..247
12. Percy Adlon, Céleste (1980), Céleste at Proust’s Deathbed………….248
13. Percy Adlon, Céleste (1980), Céleste at Proust’s Deathbed………….249
14. John Nash, ‘Céleste’ (1930), Proust’s Bedroom……………………..250
15. The University of Manchester Library, Proust’s Lock of Hair……....251
16. Chantal Akerman, La Captive (2000) Ariane on Super8…………….252
17. Chantal Akerman, La Captive (2000), Musée Rodin………………...253
18. Chantal Akerman, La Captive (2000), Ariane at the Musée Rodin….254
19. Chantal Akerman, La Captive (2000), Ariane and Andrée at the Musée
Rodin…………………………………………………………………255
20. Chantal Akerman, La Captive (2000), Ariane’s Bed………………...256
21. Chantal Akerman, La Captive (2000), Ariane and Simon Bathing…..257
22. Chantal Akerman, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080
Bruxelles (1975), Jeanne’s Bathroom………………………………...258
23. Esther Teichmann, Untitled (2014)…………………………………..259
24. Christian Marclay, Boston 2000 (2000)……………………………...260
25. Chris Marker, La Jetée (1963), Le Jardin des Plantes……………..…261
26. Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958), Muir Woods……………………..262
27. Saul Bass, Vertigo (1958), Poster Design…………………………….263
28. Bryan Nash Gill, Compression Wood (2011)………………………...264
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Abstract

Three female protagonists—Madeleine Elster of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo
(1958), Céleste Albaret of Percy Adlon’s Céleste (1980), and Ariane of Chantal
Akerman’s La Captive (2000)—are considered as the three Proustian women
who form the tripart body of this thesis. In approaching them as such, the
research has at its origin in the sensory encounter of the notorious ‘madeleine
moment’ of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, in which the taste
of a morsel of cake dipped in tea expands memory, collapses linear time, and
from which the voluminous novel blooms. Transcribed, translated, and
transposed from the literary experiences of the reader’s encounter with Proust’s
writing, text transcends the page and the encounter becomes visual in the form
of the moving image of film. These three filmed women all differ: the first,
Hitchcock’s dizzying, dazzling Hollywood siren of San Francisco, lifted from
the pages of a Parisian detective novel; the next, a German reincarnation of
Proust’s devoted housekeeper, drawn from her own words, recorded fifty years
after his death; the third, a closely-watching memory-making woman-loving
nomadic director’s nod to the Search’s captivating Albertine Simmonet. To
experience this trinity in contiguous proximity to one another through Proust is
to enter a sensorial spiral in which time, bodies, text, and vision press up against
one another in a movement that has the power to be as unsteadying as it can be
pleasurable. Immersed in Madeleine Time, the time of these three Proustian
women, allows for a consideration of the author’s life-in-writing, the Narrator’s
waiting, and the reader’s own place in relation to the textual encounter.
Madeleine Time is shown to suspend and sustain, nourish and withhold, prevent
and provoke, to move.
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Declaration

I, Alison Mary Criddle, declare that no portion of the work referred to in the
thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or
qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.
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Copyright Statement

i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules
to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the
“Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester
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ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard
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Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not
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University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The
University’s policy on Presentation of Theses.
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Acknowledgments

Thank you. For my own beloved mother, father, and brother, Robert. For my
aunts, Yvie, for the madeleine tray and everything that followed, and for Gertie,
I miss our telephone calls. For family. For my examiners, Darren Waldron and
Emma Wilson, for your generosity in giving your time and your expertise. For
my panel members, Mark Crinson and Dee Reynolds, for sharing your
knowledge, for challenging and encouraging me. For Percy Adlon, for your
delight in Céleste, and for waking so early to call from California with your
stories. For Chantal Akerman, for you and your life-work, and that sad, tender
evening at Regent Street Cinema where No Home Movie premiered without
you, and yet you filled the room. For the BFI, the Reuben Library archives, and
for my first big-screen viewing of Vertigo in all its Technicolor glory. For the
AHRC and UoM SALC, for funding and support, for allowing me to experience
so much—a formative paper at the Courtauld Institute, travel to the USA to
speak in Albuquerque, NM, my very own Vertigo pilgrimage to San
Francisco—long may Arts funding continue. For AHVS and SALC staff,
students, peers, and all nine years spent growing, learning, and sharing in your
company. For the determined PhDs who I have watched succeed. For the
Proustians, for the special closeness of reading aloud. For the students who
listened to me as a novice TA, and who taught me so much in return. For Jo
Marsh, Amanda Matthews, and Julie Fiwka, for Sarah Littlejohn and her team.
For UoM Library Special Collections for access to the Marie
Riefstahl/Nordlinger archives, and for Stella Halkyard at John Rylands. For
Esther Teichmann’s sharing. For Megan Powell’s vision. For my saving Graces.
For Sophie, for always knowing. For Gabes, for always encouraging. For Sarah,
for the importance of walks. For Mary, for your wisdom. For Nick, in’t it. For
Misha and Mike, for your sharing. For the boy whose voice and arms embrace.
For Mary Mac-now-Davies, who taught me true devotion. For Carol Mavor, my
supervisor supreme. From that first semester back in 2007 to now—we did it!
‘Thank you’ just won’t cut it. Once again, for family. For Rob, for the gin, for
the sister-in-law, and for paying your taxes. For Mum, your memory is woven
into every page. For Dad, you made every page possible. For love.
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Author’s Note

For continuity and consistency, I have elected C. K. Scott Moncrieff and
Terence Kilmartin’s English translation, as revised by D. J. Enright, as the
primary edition for all references to Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, and
Terence Kilmartin, revised, D. J. Enright, 6 vols. (London: Vintage, 2000)

Any references to the original French will come from Jean-Yves Tadié’s edited
volumes for Pléiade. Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, ed., Jean-
Yves Tadié, 4 vols. (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1987-89)

With the exception of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the case study films are viewed and
discussed with the aid of English subtitling (Adlon’s Céleste translated from its
original German, and Akerman’s La Captive from French). All quotations,
unless otherwise stated, will be presented in English.

The commitment to English traces most faithfully my own encountering of
Proust’s Search and the three films, my own being transported across
languages, both textual, and visual.
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Introduction: Three Proustian Women

Madeleine Time is the experience of the feminine in Marcel Proust’s In Search
of Lost Time (first published in French in 1913), as read through three core
films, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), Percy Adlon’s Céleste (1980), and
Chantal Akerman’s La Captive (2000). The reading encounter with Proust’s
Search, I argue, is always already cinematic. Proust’s writing brims full with
visual images and depictions of sensory stimuli. Madeleine Time is
multisensory, it can be read in terms that move beyond the literary into the
realm of the visual, to film, collapsing linear time whilst drawing the viewer
closer to the text.

For Mieke Bal, in her 1997 text, The Mottled Screen: Reading Proust Visually,1
Proust’s writing crosses over from literature in its visual strategies of
representation, fantasy, and poetic thought. Working from Bal’s sustained
reading of Proust, my emphasis is on Madeleine Time as holding the past in
order that it be reawakened in the future. Alongside Bal, Eric Karpele’s
Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost Time2 makes the
case for Proust’s Search as one of the most profoundly visual works in modern
Western literature, drawing attention to and close reading of the art works
referenced in the text. My visual encounter with Proust stretches beyond Bal’s
visuals and Karpeles’ paintings and contends that the Search is cinematic in its
being moved by Madeleine Time. The cinematic here both holds time and
moves time. ‘In Proust,’ writes Serge Doubrovsky, in his provocative and
sensual 1975 essay, ‘what sets the writing in motion is what moves it.’3
I am moved by the madeleine.

1 Mieke Bal, The Mottled Screen: Reading Proust Visually, trans. Anna-Louise
Milne (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997)
2 Eric Karpeles, Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to In Search of Lost
Time (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008)
3 Doubrovsky, ‘‘The Place of the Madeleine: Writing and Phantasy in Proust’,
trans. Bové, Carol, boundary 2, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn, 1975), pp. 107-134, p.
110
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The madeleine in Proust, as has already been highlighted by Julia Kristeva in
her Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature (translated by
Ross Guberman), and Proust and the Sense of Time (translated by Stephen
Bann), is feminine, specifically maternal.4 The Proustian madeleine, for
Kristeva, as Carol Mavor has noted in her Reading Boysihly: Roland Barthes,
J.M. Barrie, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust, and D.W. Winnicott, ‘is a
woman-cake.’5 The madeleine cake is tied to the feminine as the first example
of Proustian involuntary memory, collapsing linear time by cutting through the
present to a moment of the past. The madeleine cake is imbued with the
memory of a childhood past, returning to the Narrator of the Search to the
unanticipated sensations of a remembered longing for his mother’s goodnight
kiss, released as flavour of the cake’s crumbs touch his lips. The morsel of
woman-cake thus holds within its sponge crumbs the future of the novel as
moved by memories of the past. Madeleine Time is thus cinematic in its waiting
to be reawakened, moved out its slumber, by the taste of the past through the
form of a woman. Women are at the heart of Proust’s Search. Taking on the
feminine as part of Proust’s involuntary memory, my Madeleine Time
emphasizes film’s ability to both hold time and to make time move.

Despite his being alive during the period that witnessed the invention of film,
there is no record to suggest that Proust ever visited a cinema. And yet, his
writing is filled with a cinematic sensibility that makes for a reading encounter
filled with imagery that appears filled with movement, animating the writing.
Within the first opening forty pages of the Search, Proust’s writing is filled with
allusions and references to photography, whilst suggestions of movement give
form to content, illuminating the text. Brassaï, in his Proust in the Power of
Photography6, notes that Proust talks often of his writing in photographic terms,

4 Julia Krsiteva, Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, trans.
Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) and Proust and
the Sense of Time, trans. Stephen Bann (London: Faber and Faber, 1993)
5 Kristeva, Time and Sense, p. 6. See Carol Mavor, Reading Boysihly: Roland
Barthes, J.M. Barrie, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust, and D.W.
Winnicott (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 421
6 Brassaï, Proust in the Power of Photography, trans. Richard Howard
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001)