Rear Window: Turning Audiences to Peeping Toms Since 1954 - Nikki Anzalone

    
A man limited to a wheelchair and, in turn, an audience limited to a singular point of view; this is the essence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. It makes no attempt at flashy action sequences or sharp, snippy dialog. Its artistry lies purely in its hero (played with subtle brilliance by James Stewart) and his reactions to a peculiar sequence of events seen through the titular rear window. Hitchcock doesn’t quite leave his audience on the edge of their seats, holding their collective breath, but Rear Window has within it a suspense of it’s own creation: the wonder if there is anything really happening in this movie at all.

  After injuring himself in the field, photographer L. B. Jeffries or “Jeff” (Stewart) is left with nothing more to do than to look out his window and observe the world around him. This is an easy task, the unbearable heat has encouraged his neighbors to leave their windows wide open giving Jeff, and in turn the audience, a front row seat to their lives. At first, what Jeff sees is benign but soon the salesman Thorvald (Raymond Burr) going out late several times one night becomes the first in a long series of suspicious actions. Thorvald’s nagging wife disappears, he carries saws and rope, he sends off a trunk with all her things but leaves her handbag behind. Rear Window’s methods are simple, it’s “show don’t tell”.

When Jeff peers through a high powered camera lens and spots a little dog digging in Thorvald’s garden, the audience finds it just a strange as he does. The film doesn’t need words to tell that something is happening because it is right there on the screen. It is left up to the audience to find out.

    Part way through the story, Jeff’s nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) scolds him for his behavior remarking “We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms.” It’s true that Hitchcock’s fascination for watching others is central to the story’s plot. Without the voyeuristic tendencies of Jeff, audiences would be treated to 114 minutes of James Stewart trying to scratch his leg with a spoon while pretending to not be in love with Grace Kelly.

Speaking of, there is something to be said of Rear Window’s Hitchcock blonde, Lisa. She falls into the usual tropes, holding in her heart a passion for Jeff (that he doesn’t exactly share). However, Kelly’s Lisa is not so much a fantasy, she stands for a life that Jeff has been so desperate to elude and in the end he falls prey to it.  She’s a puzzle he must solve, battling his own fears of commitment and impotence in the midst of solving a murder.

    The main plot of Rear Window isn’t quite packed with symbolism or carefully crafted mise en scène like Hitchcock’s Psycho. There are point-of-view shots and some more neutral shots and the occasional lighting effect, nothing special. The various stories seen in the single set of the courtyard are (quite literally) another story. The story of Miss Lonelyhearts comes to mind: a horrendously lonely woman nearly driven to suicide is saved by the song of the composer across the way. Her story and even her name relies entirely on Jeff’s perspective. This is true for his other neighbors as well. Miss Torso, Miss Hearing Aid, Songwriter, all of their characterization comes from the lazy sweep of Jeff’s camera. The audience is able to form opinions through what Jeff sees and hears in that moment. In one instance, Miss Lonelyhearts bursts into tears over a table set for two and at the same time Songwriter struggles to come up with his next line of music. In another, a pair of naive newlyweds enter their new home. At first they’re eager to start a life together but as time goes on it becomes clear the husband is starting to feel weighed down by his bride. There is obviously a story in Rear Window, but like in life, it’s not the only one.

It’s small moments of masterful execution that make Rear Window: the point-of view, the stories outside, the look on Jeff’s face when he spots something new. It’s not a perfect story, the climax is admittedly less than thrilling, but it’s engaging in a way most movies aren’t, on a more intimate scale. In 114 minutes, Hitchcock shows it doesn’t take a foreboding location or a shocking twist to capture an audience. Sometimes, all it takes is an open window.