Being-in-(techni)color

My interpretation of the character of colors in Vertigo is guided by, and makes contact repeatedly with, Stanley Cavell’s chapter “The World as a Whole: Color” in his book The World Viewed (1971). In particular I wish to follow up the consequences of its opening claim: “A. . . major property of film which can serve to declare its recording of a total world is color” (80). Hitchcock’s Vertigo is for Cavell “the great example of this combination of fantasy and color symbolism. . . The film estab lishes the moment of moving from one color space into another as one of moving from one world to another” (84). Specifically, Cavell recalls the scene in which Scottie, following Madeleine, enters through a dark alley and, as he opens the back door into the shimmering Podesta Baldocchi florist shop, is flooded by color.