From Rope to Vertigo: Jimmy Stewart’s Dark Evolution Through Hitchcock Films
James Stewart in the 1930s and ‘40s didn’t necessarily seem like the natural choice for an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Stewart was a charming everyman, who relied on his sincerity. He was the hero of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), playing a small-town man who saves his town and his family many times over through his good heart. He is Jefferson Smith from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), whose good intentions lead him to accidentally uncover a nest of corruption in DC. But Jefferson Smith doesn’t give up! His good heart and morality leads to the bad guys capitulating in the end. Our modern-day Stewart is Tom Hanks. They can each be described as “a heartland guy, good people.” But later in Stewart’s career, he began to work with Hitchcock. Stewart’s work with Hitchcock led him to roles that lacked the moral clarity of his earlier films. Stewart isn’t just the good guy fighting for the little guy, or a wide-eyed innocent. Hitchcock often used Stewart as a world-weary cynic, whose morals were not black and white.
Two years after It’s a Wonderful Life, Stewart began his first of four films with Alfred Hitchcock. Across these four films, the morality of the characters that Stewart plays becomes more and more ambiguous, culminating in Stewart’s role as the antihero and near villain in Vertigo (1958).
A decade before Vertigo, Stewart made his first film with Hitchcock, Rope. Stewart plays Rupert Cadell, a philosophy professor who argues in favor of murder as an art that only superior beings should be allowed to practice. Cadell’s pro-murder commentary is clearly intended to be a blend of theory and humor. He sounds like a philosophy major at a small liberal arts college who wears all black and smokes cigarettes, but also doesn’t take himself too seriously. Cadell doesn’t actually want anyone to die, he just wants to think of himself as superior and intellectual. When, at the end of the movie, Cadell discovers that his students have actually killed someone, in part because of his discourse, he is horrified. In a speech at the end of the film, when Cadell is going to turn the two boys in, he says “you’ve given my words a meaning that I never dreamed of…tonight you’ve made me ashamed of every concept I ever had of superior or inferior beings.” I don’t think Cadell is a bad person, but his self-importance ends up unduly influencing a budding sociopath. As soon as Cadell realizes his ideas have made him an unwitting provocateur of actual murder, that’s enough to make him throw away everything he’s said for years, maybe even decades. So even though Cadell is a far cry from Jefferson Smith or George Bailey, in the end, he still adheres to a moral code, like James Stewart’s earlier characters.
Stewart and Hitchcock didn’t work together again until Rear Window in 1954, where Stewart played L.B. Jeffries, or “Jeff.” In Rear Window, Stewart’s character does not just discuss morally unsavory ideas, he acts on them. Not content to merely watch his neighbors through his window – which is understandable for someone bored and temporarily wheelchair bound in the 1950s – he gets high-powered binoculars and begins to actively spy on his neighbors. Yes, Jeff catches a killer, but one has to wonder how the other residents of the building felt about being watched. Being in one’s own home carries a certain expectation of privacy. Although Jeff is redeemed by his detective work, many of his actions, not just his words, make him a morally gray character. He even risks his girlfriend’s life at one point to satisfy his curiosity, sending her in to do reconnaissance that he can’t do on the potential killer. Of course, that is the point in the movie in which Jeff pays the most attention to his girlfriend. The rest of the time he ignores the absolutely gorgeous Grace Kelly, and would rather try and figure out what the neighbors are doing.
Stewart’s next role with Hitchcock was in The Man Who Knew Too Much as Dr. Ben McKenna. Although McKenna operates in a moral gray zone, I can easily argue that his actions are necessary, even justifiable. McKenna lies to the police and hides information about an assassination attempt in order to protect his son. Most importantly, McKenna commits manslaughter while attempting to stop the would-be assassin. McKenna is a good person, but he is in an impossible situation since he is trying to save his son’s life and stop the assassination. Although his motivations are good, this character is an important next step in the Hitchcock-Stewart character evolution. McKenna’s actions are more drastic and violent than the actions of Jeff or Cadell, even though his intentions are better. McKenna introduces the potential for physical violence into the mix.
In Vertigo, Stewart becomes a full-fledged antihero as Scottie Ferguson, combining Jeff’s voyeurism with McKenna’s more violent actions. Scottie’s voyeurism begins when he develops an obsession with the woman he has been hired to watch. At first, it seems harmless, but when she tries to drown herself early on in the film, it becomes clear that Scottie does not know how to behave like a normal person or private detective would. His response to Madeline’s near-drowning is to take her back to his apartment. Anyone else would have taken her to a hospital, or home to her husband, rather than quasi-kidnapping a woman he doesn’t know under the guise of helping her. However, he doesn’t really do anything wrong. He isn’t yet an anti-hero. Scottie does very quickly – probably way too quickly – decide he is in love with Madeleine, and enters a deep depression when she throws herself off a bell tower. His depression ends when he meets Judy, who looks like Madeline, but with brown hair and different clothes. Judy loves Scottie, but Scottie is obsessed with turning her into Madeleine, forcing her to wear clothes like Madeleine’s, and dye and style her hair like Madeleine’s. This is where Scottie becomes an anti-hero. He would rather have the image of a dead woman, than the living woman in front of him. It’s disturbing how obsessive he becomes – down to the exact suit and bun. Judy doesn’t want to become a different person, so he manipulates and pressures her until she caves to his demands.
Scottie eventually figures out that Madeline and Judy are the same person near the end of the film, and drives Judy up to the tower where Madeline’s suicide/murder happened. He forces Judy to go up to the top of the tower with him, and she confesses everything to him. They make up, but she falls to her death when they are startled by a nun. Scottie’s desire to resurrect a dead woman leads to Judy’s spiritual and physical death. He kills Judy’s real personality by making her into Madeline, and then forces Judy into a position where she actually falls to her death and doesn’t just pretend to. Although Judy’s death is unintentional, Scottie’s obsession leads him to effectively commit manslaughter.
Stewart’s character journey with Hitchcock begins with him playing a snide professor and ends with him forcing a woman into a position where she falls to her death. In all these films except The Man Who Knew Too Much, Stewart’s characters ignore the basic humanity of others. Cadell uses death to make flippant remarks and Jeff is unconcerned about his neighbor’s privacy and risking his girlfriend’s life. Scottie views Judy as a living doll and drags her to the top of a bell-tower where she ends up falling to her death. Although Jeff and Cadell have a lack of concern for the lives of others, McKenna has good intentions but is forced to make terrible choices. He is the transition character, who takes these less deadly iterations of Scottie to the next level. Scottie ends up creating the preconditions for his girlfriend’s death. He is the final step in Stewart’s character evolution throughout Hitchcock’s films. Hitchcock was able to use the formerly wide-eyed Stewart in roles that were morally nuanced, and gave us at least two of Stewart’s greatest roles, in Rear Window and Vertigo.
