REAR WINDOW DIRECTED BY ALFRED HITCHCOCK 1954 Based on a 1942 short story by Cornell Woolrich called “It Had to be Murder” REAR WINDOW DIRECTED BY ALFRED HITCHCOCK 1954 Based on a 1942 short story by Cornell Woolrich called “It Had to be Murder”

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS Best Director - Hitchcock Best B & W Cinematography Best Soundtrack Best Screenplay

PRIMARY CAST James Stewart L. B. Jefferies Grace Kelly Lisa Carol Fremont Wendell Corey Det. Lt. Thomas J. Doyle Thelma Ritter Stella Raymond Burr Lars Thorwald Judith Evelyn Miss Lonelyheart Ross Bagdasarian Musician Georgine Darcy Miss Torso Sara Berner Wife living above Thorwalds Frank Cady Husband living above Thorwalds (Childless Couple) Rand Harper Newlywed man Havis Davenport Newlywed woman

MAIN CHARACTERS *L.B. Jeffries - photographic journalist, confined to his apartment with a broken leg. *Lisa Fremont - Jeff’s girlfriend - a fashion consultant/buyer. She wants to get married; he doesn’t. *Stella - an insurance company nurse who takes care of Jeff. *Lt. Doyle - an old friend of Jeff’s from the war; a policeman.

COURTYARD NEIGHBORS *Miss Lonely Hearts - a lonely, unmarried woman looking for a husband. *Miss Torso - an aspiring ballet dancer. *The Musician - frustrated, struggling to write a song. *Childless Couple - treat their dog as if he were their child. *Newlyweds - spend most of their time behind closed blinds - need we say more? *The Salesman - sells costume jewelry; lives with his invalid wife; they often fight.

Each apartment has the story of its occupants told, almost entirely visually. All of them have something to say about relationships, and relate in some way to Jeff and Lisa.

PLOT INTRO In 1950s New York, an adventuresome free-lance photographer finds himself confined to a wheelchair in his tiny apartment while a broken leg mends. With only the occasional distraction of a visiting nurse and his frustrated love interest, a beautiful fashion consultant, his attention is naturally drawn to the courtyard outside his "rear window" and the occupants of the apartment buildings which surround it.

Soon he is consumed by the private dramas of his neighbors’ lives which play themselves out before his eyes. There is "Miss Lonelyhearts," the frustrated composer, the shapely dancer - “Miss Torso”, the newlyweds who are concealed from their neighbors by a window shade, and a bungling middle-aged couple with a little yapping dog who sleep on the fire escape to avoid the sweltering heat of their apartment …

… and then there is the mysterious salesman whose nagging, invalid wife's sudden absence from the scene ominously coincides with middle-of-the-night forays into the dark, sleeping city with his sample case. Where did she go? What's in the trunk that the salesman ships away? What's he been doing with the knives and the saw that he cleans at the kitchen sink?

*Hitchcock started in silent movies, and it is obvious in Rear Window. *The entire film takes place either inside of Jeff’s apartment, or looking out his rear window across the courtyard. *The film is almost entirely made up of the “subjective” - we see the movie from Jeff’s point of view, then see his reaction. *The view across the courtyard is a microcosm of society, especially relationships. *Rear Window has been described as Hitchcock’s most perfectly constructed film - constructed to manipulate both the narrative and the viewer’s experience of it.

Hitchcock saw Rear Window as a stimulating challenge: “It was a possibility of doing a purely cinematic film. You have an immobilized man looking out. That’s one part of the film. The second part shows what he sees, and the third part shows how he reacts. This is actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea.”

In discussing Rear Window, Hitchcock stresses the importance of the pictorial, or visual, in film- making: “Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.” Hitchcock’s interest is not so much in the stories in his films, but “in the way they are told.”

USE OF SOUND Rear Window makes very good use of both *Ambient sound - the sounds of the courtyard and the street *Dubbed sound - especially in the climatic scene

…AND MUSIC which in Rear Window plays a role as important as the dialogue and the visuals. To ignore the music is to eliminate an ironic component essential to the vision of the film.

The main function of Hitchcock's aural deep focus is irony. He achieves a depth of meaning that derives from the juxtaposition of one sound against various images. To be more specific, a given song takes on a new and frequently different meaning as it is associated with each neighbor, as well as with Jeff's own situation. For example, the first night's activities are accompanied by the song "Lover," the source of which is unspecified. Its first line— "Lover, when you're near me"—has ironic references to at least three couples. The first is a couple sharing a mattress on a fire escape. The second is Jeff and his fiancee, who has just walked out on him after a quarrel. The third is Thorwald and his wife; it is her perpetual nearness—she is an invalid—that presumably drives him to murder her later the same night.

A second song that refers to several situations is "Waiting For My True Love to Appear." It is being played at the party of the musician. The lyrics apply equally well to Jeff, whose fiancee has not yet shown up for her evening visit, and Miss Lonelyhearts, who eventually gives up "waiting" and goes to a restaurant to pick up a man.

By the time Miss Lonelyhearts returns from the restaurant, the musician's guests are singing "Mona Lisa," a song obviously associated with Jeff's girlfriend, whose name is Lisa.

THEMES *Relationships *Voyeurism *Ethics And two of Hitchcock’s favorite recurring themes: *You can never be safe. *It can be difficult to distinguish good people from bad people.

Many of Hitchcock's films, and really all movies, indirectly employ the use of voyeuristic framing to make the viewer feel like they are witnessing the events portrayed on screen. The frame is likened to a window through which the audience may satisfy its impulse to pry into the intimate details of the character's lives. In Rear Window, this voyeuristic framing technique is taken to a literal level in an attempt to expand the emotional involvement of the viewer.

THE MORALITY OF VOYEURISM "The New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the work house... You know, in the old days, they used to put your eyes out with a red-hot poker," warns Stella. "If you could only see yourself [with those binoculars]... It’s diseased," Lisa scolds and comments that we are turning into "a race of Peeping Toms.”

Jeff ponders whether it is ethically acceptable to spy on people through his long-focus lens. "I’m not much on rear-window ethics," replies Lisa to his semi-rhetorical question. At first both Lisa and Stella disapprove of Jeff’s snooping ("window shopper," accuses Stella), but later become keen peepers themselves, as does the audience. The suspected murderer only realizes he is being watched when, following Lisa’s worried hand movements, he notices the position of his observer. At this dramatic moment Jeff changes from being the watcher to being the watched, and all of a sudden his former victim gains the upper hand.

On two occasions Jeff’s suspicions about the crime appear to be unfounded. The main characters in the film, as well as the audience, are temporarily disappointed that no murder had been committed after all. This feeling of disappointment induces a sense of guilt which gets the audience even more closely involved in the course of the story. Whether in fact a murder has been committed is of importance also from the point of view of the moral acceptance of peeping. "I wonder if it’s ethical [to watch a man], even if you prove that he didn’t commit a crime?" muses Jeff.

Hitchcock’s movies have much more humor than most people realize. The humor is usually very dry, much like his own sense of humor. Hitchcock also liked to include a lot of sexual innuendo in his films. The Hollywood Production Code (industry censorship) of the time was very strict, but Hitchcock believed that sex was part of the human experience, and should be a part of films. Hitchcock made a short cameo appearance in all of his movies.

HITCHCOCK’S CAMEO in REAR WINDOW