Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954): The Limited Perspective of the Voyeur

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller Rear Window encapsulates his masterful use of controlling information to create deep-seated suspense in the audience. James Stewart plays L.B. Jefferies, a photographer bound to a wheelchair in his apartment as his broken leg heals. He finds himself in a world in which his perception is limited to the apartment complex outside his window. The summer days grow long and the stifling heat causes the tenants of Jefferies’ complex to open their windows and reveal the story of their lives to Jefferies as he watches unseen from his rear window.

Each window opens a unique narrative to Jefferies; he even gives the characters titles as he follows their lives. There is Miss Torso, a beautiful dancer, Miss Lonely Hearts, a loveless bachelorette, a young newlywed couple, a songwriter and most notably a salesman living with his bedridden wife. Jefferies shares the stories he observes with his girlfriend, Lisa, played by Grace Kelly. Jefferies, Lisa and the house nurse, Thelma, find themselves engrossed in Jefferies speculations regarding a murder plot involving the salesman, Lars Thorwald, and his wife.

Jefferies tirelessly stares out his window, marking every movement of Lars after Mrs Thorwald mysteriously disappears. Despite Jefferies’ friend, Doyle the detective, attempting to convince Jeffreies that his plot is an imagined tale, Jefferies tenaciously observes Lars day and night from his rear window. After collecting piles of “hard” evidence including Lars’ strange, late-night walks, a dead dog, mysterious long-distance phone calls, suspicious jewelry and a handbag, the amateur sleuth trio decide to investigate further, resulting in Jefferies’ hidden vantage point being revealed. Lars ventures to Jefferies’ apartment and after a failed attempt to throw Jefferies from the rear window, he confesses to the police that he did indeed murder his wife.

By maintaining the voyeuristic point of view from the rear window of Jefferies’ apartment, the audience views the same events that Jefferies stumbles upon from the same limited perspective. Hitchcock is the renowned “master of suspense” because of his expert use of revealing just enough information to the audience to keep them on the edge of their seat as events unfold in the movie’s narrative. Because the viewer knows as much as Jefferies does, they are forced to make their own conclusions regarding this mysterious murder plot. They must decide if they will believe Jefferies, in which case Lars’ apartment across the courtyard lurks ominously as a scene of a gruesome murder, or follow the advice of Doyle and believe the entire story is the figment of a stagnant imagination.

Hitchcock is known for using the thematic element of mistaken or misguided identities in his film to create twists and turns as well as suspense in his narratives. In his eerie psychological thriller, Psycho, he portrays Norman Bates as a polite, reserved individual. As we know Norman turns out to be quite the opposite: a deranged psychopath. In North by Northwest the main character is mistaken for a government agent and becomes the target of both the government and spies. Rear Window is no different; Lars is identified quite quickly as a murderer, but that identity is what is in question throughout the film. It is this idea that pushes the plot of the movie forward and creates conflicting theories among the characters as well as the audience viewing the film.

The historical context of the film brings up another intriguing aspect of Hitchcock’s vision for Rear Window. Between 1950 and 1955 the age of Mccarthyism was in full swing. The United States was in a communist scare. Friends threw friends under the bus to save their own skin, neighbors turned on neighbors; suspicion ran rampant. It seems reasonable to assume Hitchcock was inspired by the social strife in America during this period as he directed Rear Window. One neighbor speculating about another committing terrible actions is very reminiscent of the attitude of many Americans during the early 1950’s.

Unlike a vast majority of films portraying cinematic worlds with numerous settings and diverse sets, Hitchcock’s Rear Window does an incredible job of creating a minimalist cinematic world within the confines of a single apartment complex. The camera’s gaze never leaves Jefferies’ apartment or the courtyard outside his window.

The opening and closing shots of the film take on a cyclical nature in terms of presenting the entire world of the film to the viewer. The movie begins as the blinds of Jefferies’ windows rise, revealing the apartment complex beyond. The camera slowly zooms forward to the ledge of the window frame to convey Jefferies’ view throughout the entire movie. After a brief cut to a close-up shot of a thermometer reading over ninety degrees, conveying the stifling heat of the season as well as foreshadowing imminent tension, the camera pans around the entirety of the apartment complex. This pan shows wide-open window frames in which Jefferies’ “characters” go about their daily actions. The viewer receives a sense of every miniature narrative observed by Jefferies. Each window literally frames these characters with a medium shot. This medium shot allows the viewer to perceive what the character’s actions are as well as the relationships or lack-there-of..

In a sense this panning shot conveys many separate cinematic worlds within a grander world, the apartment complex. Each window frame is essentially a narrative within the larger narrative. Each character plays the central role within their own small story, viewed by Jefferies, Lisa, and Thelma. Each narrative is it’s own separate entity. The narratives very rarely overlap; the neighbors seldom interact with each other.

Only a catastrophic event brings each framed story together into the overarching world of the apartment complex. For example, the first time every tenant of the complex interacts together is when the dog is mysteriously killed. Everyone races to their windows to watch as the dog’s owner mourns. “Didja kill him because he liked ya?” the woman yells into the night, addressing the community as a whole. The next example is when Lars is pushing Jefferies out his window. The scene appears to fast-forward as the tenants race to their windows to see the action. This sped up action conveys the stress within the community and the cinematic world as a whole.

The way we view the world of the apartment complex changes as Jefferies utilizes different methods of gazing into the windows surrounding him. Specific aspects of the world become magnified as Jefferies uses his photography tools. We are given close-up and extreme close-up shots as he looks through his camera’s telescopic lens. His binoculars give us more of a medium close-up shot. Each tool gives us the advantage of being able to see specific objects, actions and emotions in more detail while also narrowing our gaze within the world.

When a character leaves the complex, such as Lars as he walks mysteriously into the night through the narrow alleyway, they essentially exit the cinematic world all together, like exiting a stage. We have no way of knowing where they are going or what they are doing. When they leave our gaze, their narrative pauses until they return to the complex.

It seems notable that Jefferies is a traveling photographer. He has made a career of capturing images from all over the world. He never seems to go to the same place, something new and intriguing always calls to him. So when he is confined to viewing the apartment complex around him, it becomes the entire world to him. He makes do with what he is given and observes every aspect of his world. In turn the viewer is given glimpses into the lives of half a dozen other people. With the turn of Jefferies’ head he can move from one world to another, one window frame to another.

The world within the apartment complex is even given it’s own diagetic soundtrack through the constant practicing of the songwriter living near Jefferies. If the songwriter isn’t playing the piano alone or with his band, he is playing music on his record player. The music in the background of the action observed by Jefferies rarely, if ever, matches what’s happening on screen. An intense moment may have a lighthearted soundtrack because the music is an aspect within the cinematic world and the songwriter doesn’t play for the events we see in the film.

The closing scene of the film directly corresponds with the series of shots from the introduction. The camera zooms to the edge of the windowsill in Jefferies’ apartment to view the complex. The shot cuts to a close-up of the thermometer, this time it reads around seventy degrees. This tolerable temperature signifies a cooling of the tension in the film as it comes to a close and the ending of the summer. The camera cuts to a pan of the complex to show us the same characters we followed during the film. Each narrative is given it’s own closure: a new dog is introduced, Miss Lonely hearts is visiting with the songwriter, Miss Torso’s boyfriend comes home from the army, and Lars’ apartment is being painted over to get ready for new tenants. The final shot of the film shows the blinds of the rear window closing, hiding the cinematic world as the film draws to a close.

Hitchock created something very special with Rear Window. He takes the notion of narrative perspective and exaggerates it by creating an invalid character without the ability to leave his apartment. We see what Jefferies sees, nothing more or less. Hithcock’s artful approach to what information the viewers should or should not be given shows his mastery of suspense and ability to make an audience identify with his characters but it also shows his ability to make an audience question even their own notion of the truth.

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