Elizabeth Bullock

Vertigo Bardo: Spectral Rebirth and Death in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) is widely regarded as a masterpiece of European-American culture.  Nevertheless, its surreal liminality invites a productive reading through the lens of Eastern philosophies, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism.  This presentation considers how these religious and philosophical traditions offer new methodological insights into Vertigo’s exploration of desire, identity, and transience.

About
HitchCon Advisory Board member. For Elizabeth Bullock, movies are a “gateway drug” to a life of the mind. She is a cinema, art history and humanities instructor at the City Colleges of Chicago and at Dominican University, River Forest. Bullock earned her Humanities M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Cinema and Media Studies program. Her publications include: “Naughts and Crosses: Marital and Cinematic Gamesmanship in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith” in Hitchcock Annual (2021), “Imaginary Women in Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman” in Vertigo 65 (forthcoming 2025) edited by Daniel Varndell, and “More Blessed To Give: Tracking the Reception of Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)” in a forthcoming compilation edited by Robert Kapsis.