This Time on Greenscreening

Rear Window (1954) directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis:

News photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart), confined to a wheelchair after an accident, spends his time watching the occupants of neighboring apartments through the windows facing their shared courtyard, much to the chagrin of his fianceé, Lisa (Grace Kelly). Studying the intricacies of his neighbors’ daily routines, Jeff becomes convinced that a murder has taken place, and decides to investigate.

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Why Rear Window?

In the early 1950s, Hollywood was fighting for survival, as television eroded its audience, the effects of antitrust rulings ended the studios’ monopoly control of the production and distribution of films, and foreign art films captured the hearts and minds of critics. Along with Singin’ in the Rain, The Ten Commandments (1956) and The Searchers (1956), Rear Window is the epitome of 1950s Hollywood spectacle, designed to give audiences what they could only see in theaters. Filmed in glorious Technicolor, projected on a big screen in the new widescreen format, with the iconic stars Grace Kelly and James Stewart, and the auteur of auteurs Alfred Hitchcock, the film is grand Hollywood spectacle at its finest.

The film takes place almost entirely through Jeff’s perspective, through a combination of point-of-view shots and reaction shots. Without explaining a lot, we are able to follow along with Jeff’s thoughts, opinions, and conclusions as he spies on his neighbors and develops his theory about the murder. Roger Ebert pointed out that this is the Kuleshov effect from Soviet cinema theory playing out in a commercial film; Hitchcock delivers most of the information visually, we interpret the sequence of shots and reaction shots and we conclude that a murder has taken place, without actually seeing a crime on screen.

Earlier in the series, we noted that Hitchcock apprenticed at Ufa in Germany, way back in the days of Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). Hitchcock never forgot the lessons of silent cinema and the Expressionists, and his films work tremendously well because of his keen sense of using visuals and sound in harmony.

Thematically, Rear Window explores the pleasure of looking, the attraction of that which is being looked at, and raises questions about voyeurism, privacy, and the boundaries between the public and the private sphere.

Jeff’s obsession with his neighbors' lives is a reflection of our own curiosity about the lives of those around us, and an investigation into why we love films and other visual media. In casting Jimmy Stewart, the everyman, Hitchcock implicates all of us; voyeurism is something we all enjoy, hence why we’re sitting in a movie theater watching strangers.

The film also has a lot to say about the dangers of getting too involved in what we're watching. It's one thing to watch from a safe distance; it's something else when we get too close. Jeff and Lisa are endangered when Jeff insists that they investigate the suspected murder, and the film builds from there to its terrific climax. What would Hitchcock have made of a world where screens have moved closer to our face (phones and VR headsets?), where our first screen also has a front-facing camera on it, and where technology companies keep track of what we're watching?

Rear Window played an important role in the development of film theory, most notably around the themes of scopophilia (the pleasure derived from looking at something), voyeurism, and the male gaze. Laura Mulvey, a prominent feminist film theorist, wrote about Rear Window in her seminal work, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), in which she coined the term “the male gaze.”

Mulvey argued that the camera in Hollywood films like Rear Window assume the viewer is masculine. The camera makes the viewer identify with the male characters on screen and presents female characters as objects of desire. In Rear Window, Jeffries objectifies and fetishizes his female neighbors -- see the scenes where he watches Miss Torso dance in her apartment. Mulvey emphasizes that the film's portrayal of female characters as passive objects of male desire reinforces patriarchal power structures. Mulvey's work was one of the most influential film theories of the 20th Century.

Rear Window was an instant classic, both a critical and commercial success. It received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Director for Hitchcock. Today, Rear Window is considered one of the greatest films ever made, ranking 38th in Sight and Sound’s 2022 Critics Poll.

The film's influence can be seen in countless films and television shows; it has been referenced hundreds of times and remade either formally or informally dozens of times. Essentially, anytime you see a character watching neighbors through a window, or spying on another character, or using a camera lens to see something, it’s almost certainly a reference to Rear Window. Due to its technical brilliance and its themes, Rear Window is practically mandatory viewing for film students, so the film continues to influence generations of filmmakers nearly 70 years after its release.

Learn More About Rear Window

Roger Ebert's Great Movies Essay on Rear Window

A Short Video: Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in under 10 minutes