ABSTRACT
In criticism of Vertigo (1958), as in that of Rear Window, one repeatedly encounters the assertion that 'the spectator constructed by the film is clearly male'. In this chapter analysis of Hitchcock have in part been meant to demonstrate that male spectator is as much 'deconstructed' as constructed by the films, which reveal a fascination with femininity that throws masculine identity into question and crisis. Sadism wins the day, and the woman dies. 'To make a dead body of woman', writes Sarah Kofman, speaking of Freud's 'killing off' of woman at the end of his essay on 'Femininity', 'is to try one last time to overcome her enigmatic and ungraspable character, to fix in a definitive and immovable position instability and mobility themselves. For woman's deathlike rigidity makes it possible to put an end to the perpetual shifting back and forth between masculinity and femininity which constitutes the whole enigma of 'woman'.
