Rear Window (1954) Director: Alfred Hitchcock
“Tell me everything that you saw and what you think it means.”
★★★★★
Based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story “It Had To Be Murder” (which was itself based on an H.G. Wells story entitled “Through A Window”), Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window offers a playful examination of the inherent voyeurism within the cinematic art. Screenwriter John Michael Hayes (who collaborated with Hitchcock on three other scripts: To Catch A Thief, The Trouble With Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much) situates us squarely inside the upper flat of a wounded photojournalist named L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) and his elegant, erotic beau named Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly). Jeff spends his days peering out his rear window, peeking into the lives of his neighbors, drawing inferences –we watch Jeff watching things, then the camera moves outward so that we see what he sees, and finally we see his reaction. While Jeff voyeuristically watches his neighbors, we in the audience also voyeuristically watch Jeff. Therefore, the audience shares a certain kinship with Jeff; we are both forced to sit and view a drama unfolding before our eyes. However, Jeff shows us the true anxiety of the voyeuristic act of cinema –the fear of being seen or discovered. This is precisely what happens to Jeff when he tries to hide behind the shadows inside his apartment, terrified that his neighbors might discover his nosy secret. In ‘playing the audience like a piano’ Hitchcock reveals the deepest anxiety of the cinematic moviegoer: the fear of being seen.
Rear Window is brilliantly shot mostly within the confines of one room, with large open windows gazing out onto a studio set designed to be an apartment complex in New York City. The film is bookended by the opening and closing of a large rear window. L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries is recuperating from a broken leg, an injury he sustained on the job abroad. He remains sedentary and slightly emasculated in his predicament, while he envisions himself a worldly adventurer –a hero in his own story. Jeff has a girlfriend, Lisa Fremont, who comes from the upper-crust of New York society, an heiress and socialite. She is “too perfect” for Jeff and his disgruntled demeanor –he is resistant to settling down with Lisa even though she is simply radiant– but she loves him anyway. He also has a physical therapist come by once a day from the insurance company to help him recover. As a photojournalist, he is accustomed to an wild life traveling around the world and risking his life for the perfect shot. But as a result of his broken leg, Hitchcock confines us to seeing things from Jeff’s perspective –we are deliberately limited in our viewpoint. We are rendered wounded and immobile, powerless and helpless, just like Jeff. Outside Jeff’s rear window, we peek in on the lives of various neighbors, gaining a voyeuristic glimpse of their personal lives. He sees a young, attractive woman dubbed “miss torso” (Georgine Darcy) who fends off the advances of several different men. Jeff speculates she is something of a loose woman, but his girlfriend Lisa Fremont knows otherwise. Later in the film it is revealed that “miss torso” was only doing surrounding herself by a cohort of men in order to get ahead in her career. She has been unexpectedly dating a military man, short and stout. In the neighborhood –a panopticon of sorts– we also meet a newlywed couple who moves in and mostly keep their shades drawn; an older married couple who sleep outside on their terrace due to the heat; a piano player who is writing his song throughout the film (here, Hitchcock makes his famous cameo beside the piano player); and a young woman who is desperate for romance dubbed “miss lonely-hearts” (Judith Evelyn). She later tries to commit suicide due to depression and loneliness. Notably, her tragic circumstances are far less interesting to Jeff than the murder which he believes took place in the apartment above her. In the apartment above, there is a salesman named Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) whose wife stays home each day –an invalid– but she mysteriously disappears one day and Jeff cannot escape the thought that a murder has occurred.
One theme that recurs throughout the film is the institution of marriage. Jeff refuses to marry Lisa Fremont because she resides in a different world of material comfort and wealthy elitism, yet in his present situation, he is incapable of taking care of himself, entirely dependent on the women in his life. His sexual impotence also runs throughout the film –we are shocked to witness his rejection of this gorgeous blond beauty even as she practically throws herself at him. He prefers voyeurism to reality. In the absence of real adventure in his life, he discovers a new manner of intrigue through his voyeurism. About midway through the film, Jeff speaks with his friend and former fellow military veteran, Detective Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey), regarding the limits and goodness of voyeurism. When is it good or bad to gaze into people’s lives? Is there a point at which it becomes excessive? Here, Hitchcock explores the ethics of audience viewership, asking where the boundary exists between mere exploitative obsession, and art that is also beneficial, edifying. The dark side of the participatory voyeur is that he is secretly, at heart, desirous for the most dark and awful thing to happen –like a murder.
In the end, Jeff and Lisa devise a plan to prove the murder but the culprit, Mr. Thorwald, suddenly realizes what is happening as Lisa is caught in his apartment. In a truly terrifying moment, Thorwald slowly gazes upward at Jeff, breaking the threshold between subject and object, viewer and viewed. The audience remains in a state of anxiety, active as a participant but ultimately helpless. Suddenly, the voyeur is exposed –his ultimate nightmare. After Thorwald trudges up to Jeff’s apartment, a wounded Jeff manages to hold him off for a brief period of time by temporarily blinding him with flash bulbs in his camera but Jeff is eventually attacked and thrown from his balcony, breaking his other leg. In the end, he continues to sleep in his wheelchair by the open window while Lisa is now dressed in pants (quite literally wearing the pants in the relationship) and ready to join him on future adventures, implying that their differences have been resolved at least for a time.
There is remarkably little music in Rear Window, especially when considering the renowned scores of Psycho or Vertigo. The primary sounds we hear in the film are echoes from across the courtyard, people’s voices, dogs barking, and the piano man playing his song –a song which is being composed as we go along with the film. This vast courtyard set design for Rear Window was incredibly impressive –a huge 32-room apartment building constructed at Paramount Pictures to mirror a fictional Manhattan address (125 W 9th Street).
The entirety of Rear Window can be interpreted as a contemplative meditation on the voyeuristic activity of watching movies, the titillating act of viewing cinema. As we look into the lives of several different neighbors, none of them are more compelling than the potential killer. Perhaps in revealing this to us, Hitchcock offers a comment on the perversity latent in ordinary moviegoing audiences –the average “window shopper” wants to see a murder more than anything else, like tragedy (i.e. “miss lonelyhearts”), sex (i.e. ‘miss torso”), or romance (i.e. the newlyweds). What do we want? A murder mystery. All throughout the film, the audience shares in the inquisitive, intrusive gaze of Jeff as he sits in his apartment. We watch along as all the ingredients of the movie are slowly added –music, romance, tragedy, comedy, tension, sex, and finally murder. In the end we are gratified, but horrified at the thought of a suspected murderer discovering and confronting a peeping tom from afar.
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Credits:
- Director: Alfred Hitchcock
- Screenplay by: John Michael Hayes
- Based on: “It Had to Be Murder,” a 1942 story in Dime Detective by Cornell Woolrich
- Produced by: Alfred Hitchcock
- Starring:
- James Stewart…..L. B. “Jeff” Jefferies
- Grace Kelly…..Lisa Fremont
- Wendell Corey…..NYPD Det. Lt. Thomas “Tom” J. Doyle
- Thelma Ritter…..Stella
- Raymond Burr…..Lars Thorwald
- Cinematography: Robert Burks
- Edited by: George Tomasini
- Music by: Franz Waxman
- Production Company: Patron Inc.
- Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Other Notes:
- Hitchcock Cameo: Alfred Hitchcock makes his traditional cameo appearance in the songwriter’s apartment, where he can be seen winding a clock.