Essay on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window
While analyzing the film “Rear Window” I found several authors with opposing opinions about it. My goal in this paper is to set forth different points of view and make my own original evaluation of this movie.
To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into three main sections. The first section summarizes the plot of the movie and the second one gives the evaluation of secondary sources and analysis of a rhetorical issue about “Rear Window”. I conclude with a third section that summarizes all previous statements.
THE PLOT OF THE MOVIE.
According to IMDb.com, as of April 2014, “Rear Window” directed by Alfred Hitchcock is the 31st highest-rated movie on Internet Movie Database, with an IMDb rating of 8.6/10. It is a thriller based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story “It Had to Be Murder”.
The story of the film “Rear Window” is next. Professional photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (James Stewart) is forced permanently to sit in one of the apartments in Greenwich Village. His leg is in plaster from foot to hip after breaking. He is visited by a nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), girlfriend-model Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) and occasionally by his friend, a police officer. His rear window looks out onto a small courtyard and some other apartments. He tries to while away the time and watches his neighbors, who keep their windows open. The tenants are: a newly married couple; lonely girl ballerina; composer, living in the attic; a lonely middle-aged woman on the ground floor; an old couple with a dog, which they descend from their floor to walk (and then re-raise) on the special elevator; a large middle-aged man Lars Thorwald, caring for his sick wife.
Jefferies has nothing better to do, so he observes the lives of neighbors in the yard. As a result of these observations, he suddenly comes to the conclusion that a woman had been killed in one of the apartments. Jeff hears a scream “Don’t!” and a sound of breaking glass. After that he notices strange behavior of Thorwald. Jeff notices that Thorwald’s wife is gone and sees Thorwald cleaning a large knife and handsaw. Later, Thorwald ties a large trunk with heavy rope and has moving men haul it away. At first no one believes Jeff, but gradually he manages to convince Lisa and Stella. His friend, who is a police officer, doesn’t believe him until almost the very end. As a result of negligence of characters, a suspected person understands that he has being watched, and comes to Jeff in one of the final scenes of the movie. During the fight Jeff falls out of the window and breaks his second leg. Thorwald was caught by the police.
THE ANALYSIS OF THE FILM.
One film critic in his film review stated that “this film exposes many facets of the loneliness of city life and it tacitly demonstrates the impulse of morbid curiosity” (Crowther, Rear Window (1954)).
John Belton on the contrary states that “like many of the best works of classical Hollywood cinema Rear Window is a deceptively obvious film…it presents the best that Hollywood has to offer its audiences in the tumultuous 1950s” (1).
I tend to agree with Sidney Gottlieb, who states that “Rear Window is a film about the pleasures and the dangers of the look. If it were only about morbid curiosity, the film itself would be just a curiosity, not the impressively shrewd and powerful film that it is” (Gottlieb).
Analyzing characters of the movie “Rare Window”, we can come to the following idea. We get deeply involved into the story. Hitchcock gets us to relate to the people on screen. Thorwald seems to be the negative character in this movie, because he obviously has killed his wife. But we don’t get to know this character well and we do not associate ourselves with him. Instead, we identify with Jeff. We see the world pictured in the movie through this character. He is spying on his neighbors. He is doing something he’s not supposed to do, he is essentially amoral and takes liberties with other people’s privacy. That makes him guilty as well. And this guilt spreads to us, the viewers.
But on the other hand, this film imaginatively and vividly pictures our daily life of continuously looking at things and being looked at. Through looking we analyze situation and the world around us; we establish some social connections and evaluate people; we obtain information through looking. Person cannot help but look. That is our nature, a nature of human being. So all this spying can be justified at some point.
I would like to support this idea by quoting Sydney Gotlieb:
We have a sense that to gain knowledge, of course we open our eyes, but we also have an implicit faith that by looking at people, we establish a sympathetic connection; we become more fully human, more fully social and sociable, by looking. That’s one of our hopes; it’s the conventional wisdom, you might say, about looking, and it’s both dramatized and also undermined in “Rear Window”.
The film also shows us that this nature of constantly looking sometimes does more harm than good. It can punish us and keep away from any social connection; sometimes it plays a cruel joke with us. Such thing happened to the main character – Jeff. At the same time, even though Jeff brought some danger on himself, his nature of looking become social useful. Even this, at first glance, amoral behavior did some good for the society. Without Jeff, spying on his neighbors, police would never found out about the crime and would never catch the murderer.
Hitchcock’s Rear Window demonstrates how irresistible people can be to a cinema of attractions. Sometimes we cannot resist this. We do not control ourselves, when it comes to some things, which hold our attention and interest. Jeff yields to temptation as well.
Following the point stated above, it is reasonable to point out the statement of Sydney Gotlieb. He says that “one of the most provocative points about Rear Window is that the excitement and interest generated by the visual spectacles can sometimes be very deceptive. Watching can be distracting as well as engaging. All this is conveyed very powerfully and precisely in a little film within the film”.
If we try to psychoanalyze the main character, we may come to a conclusion that Jeff is that kind of person, who prefers to be estranged. That brings the whole theory of looking in Hitchcock’s movie to some new dimension. The main character chooses to simply watch without getting involved. Just like he prefers not to get married or be involved in serious relationships. Even his occupation as a photographer tells us that he is better walking around the world freely with no limitations. All he wants is to observe. Maybe he is afraid of participation. The movie, in its own way, condemns such attitude to life. It shows us that no matter how hard you try to stay aside of those entire things which are happening around you, you will never be able to do that forever. At some point you will be have to get involved. Just like the main character was have to get involved, when he witnessed a crime. This conception of non-interference cannot save you from being hurt. You may think:“what kind of harmcan make a simple looking?” The film shows us that kind of harm. That conception figuratively comes to an apartment of Jeff and throws him out of the window. Someone will construe this scene as a penalty for this looking nature of a human, but other people may see something deeper in it. This scene may refer us to the thought that simply looking is not enough. You whether participate and get involved or go away without peeping.
CONCLUSION.
From examining different points of view concerning the value of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, I can say that there is no common opinion. To my mind this movie is significant because it shows human’s nature of constant looking and our irresistance to it. It raises the issue of moral lines and participation in social life. It brings us to the idea that it is very important to keep balance between privacy of others and social responsibility.
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