Madeleine's Introduction

As the audience becomes completely identified, we start proactively reading and projecting emotions into the plot. From the beginning, Hitchcock sets the audience up to take this kind of perspective and action. In Madeleine’s entrance for instance, the audience takes Scotty’s place, as she shows her profile. The juxtaposed shot of Scotty’s profile makes his having that view of Madeleine impossible. “Scotty is denied the gaze only for it and its fetishizing predilections to be taken up by the apparatus and built into the enunciating position itself” (Linderman 63). The camera has taken over Scotty’s position, standing in for him completely. This kind of positioning makes the audience prone not only to identify with Scotty but also to make it so that “at once we’re totally involved” (Spoto 282).