Respond to these rapid questions in our Rear Window quiz and we will tell you which Rear Window character you are. Play it now.
In Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” the protagonist is confined to a wheelchair, and we are confined to his perspective, his lack of freedom, and his constrained choices. We share his obsession when he sacrificially spends his long days and evenings keeping a close eye on his neighbors. Although we are aware that spying on others is unethical, aren’t we always voyeurs when we watch movies? Here is a movie about a guy who does what we do as viewers: uses a camera to peer into the personal lives of strangers.
The guy is L.B. Jeffries, better known as “Jeff” to his fiance. James Stewart portrays him as a man of action who is bedridden due to a fractured leg and a bulky cast that extends all the way to his hip. Only two regular visitors come to his apartment, and he never departs it. One is his Stella (Thelma Ritter) visiting nurse, who foresees problems. (“the New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the workhouse”). The other is his fiancee, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), a stylish model and dress designer who is hopeless in her attempts to win his commitment. Stella reprimands him, saying, “What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.” He would rather observe the lives of others than exist in his own skin.
The patio where Jeff’s apartment window is located is shared by a large number of other windows, all of which were constructed on a single set by Hitchcock. As the days go by, Jeff gets to know some of the other residents. Miss Torso hosts cocktail parties for several guys at once, Miss Lonelyhearts hosts dinner parties for fictitious gentlemen, a couple lowers their cherished pet dog into the garden in a basket, and a composer who worries that his career is going nowhere are also present. And then there is Thorvald (Raymond Burr), a guy who’s miserable because his wife stays in bed all day. One day the wife vanishes, and Jeff starts to believe that someone has murdered her after putting together a number of clues (a saw, a suitcase, a freshly dug area in Thorvald’s courtyard garden).
The method of the film is demonstrated by the manner he comes to this conclusion. Rarely has a movie displayed its techniques with such audacity. Jeff peers first here and then there, much like a movie camera would, while seated in his wheelchair and holding a camera with a telephoto lens. We see what he sees. Without using words, we can infer what inferences he makes from the pictures, which together form a suspicious montage.
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The Russian filmmaker Kuleshov is credited with a renowned experiment from the early days of cinema in which he paired similar shots of a man’s face with different shots. Audiences remarked that the guy appeared to be hungry when he was paired with food, and so on. The bullets had no effect. They gained significance from the montage. Like a full-length illustration of the same idea, “Rear Window” (1954) shows how Jeff’s mental gunfire adds up to homicide.
I sometimes imagine that, like whales in a tank at the zoo, different archetypal situations circled endlessly in Hitchcock’s mind. Voyeurism, or the act of watching someone while they are unaware that they are being observed, was one of them. Another was the fabled idea of an innocent individual who was wrongly accused. And a lot of his movies show how powerless or uninterested men can be in the presence of cool blonde beauty. It’s common knowledge that Hitchcock’s blondes (Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly, and Tippi Hedren) are erotic playmates, but it’s important to remember that they are more often riddles or dangers. The Kelly character Lisa has an unrequited affection for Jeff, but he keeps her at a distance by describing his lifestyle; he claims that a fashion model couldn’t survive in the desert or the jungle.
Rear Window Quiz
The leg cast, however, suggests that perhaps his true motivation for keeping her away is dread of impotence. This reminds us of the striking resemblance between Scotty, the Stewart character from “Vertigo,” and the fashion illustrator portrayed by Barbara Bel Geddes. She also adores him. He stays out of the way. She understands his dizziness as Kelly tends to the broken limb. Both watch his intrusive preoccupations. Scotty in “Vertigo” develops feelings for a lady he has watched but never spoken to. In “Rear Window,” he falls head over heels for photography and loses himself in the task of reassembling the pictures he has captured with his camera. He seeks things he can observe from a distance rather than things he can physically touch.
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Stewart is a fascinating casting option for these roles. He appeared in light comedies, romances, crime stories, and Westerns in the 1930s and 1940s, almost always as a character we admired. In the fantasy sequences of Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” after the war, he showed a dark side, which Hitchcock coldly and distantly exploited in “Rope,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “Vertigo,” and “Rear Window.” Consider Tom Hanks, whose everyman appeal is frequently compared to Jimmy Stewart’s, to get a sense of the peculiar effect of these roles. What would it be like to perceive him in a strange and perverted way?
In “Rear Window,” Jeff is a guy who enjoys looking rather than a moralist, a police officer, or a do-gooder. He hesitates at some obviously important points in the movie when he should be acting, not because he doesn’t care what happens, but rather because he forgets he can be an active player and is absorbed in a passive part. The flashgun on his camera serves as his weapon at the end when he is in peril inside his own apartment. He intends to blind or dazzle his adversary, and as his eyesight gradually returns, it is through a blood-red dissolve that implies passion expressed through the eyes.
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Kelly is classy and cool in these scenes, and there are a few where we can really sense her pain. She enjoys dressing elegantly, making grand entrances, and treating Jeff to catered meals and champagne. Because it suggests a relationship he wants to avoid, he ignores or dislikes her focus. She leans over him to kiss him in one shot, which is partially a point-of-view closeup, and the camera does so even though Jeff doesn’t. It’s as if she’s pleading with the audience to stop focusing on what Jeff is watching and instead consider what he should be taking in with his eyes—her beauty.
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Hitchcock is at his most cunning in “Rear Window”‘s remote-control suspense scenes, putting Lisa and Stella in perilous circumstances and allowing them to remain there due to Jeff’s negligence or inaction. He does not leave his scooter. Kelly even enters the apartment of the alleged wife killer as they journey into dangerous territory. He observes. We see impending peril. He and I are unable to move or raise the alert.
The level of danger and suspense in “Rear Window,” which was created in 1954 with the intention of providing entertainment, has been raised so far above the cheap thrills of contemporary slasher movies. Long ago, Hitchcock outlined the distinction between surprise and tension. It comes as a surprise when an explosive under a table detonates. The tension comes from not knowing when the bomb will detonate but knowing that it is under the table. Today’s slasher movies rely on peril that appears out of nowhere. Surprise. And astonishment that vanishes abruptly, providing us a brief rush but no satisfaction. “Rear Window” carefully builds tension throughout and stores it in our memories, making the entire movie feel like foreplay in a thriller when the big reveal comes.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Departed Quiz.
