Hitchcock is the master of this intertwining of entertainment and art and Rear Window is one of his most subtle examples of this. A film many dismiss as merely entertaining the reality is a film that Truffaut praised of its ‘construction, the unity of inspiration, the wealth of details’ and Robin Wood hailed as Hitchcock’s first ‘masterpiece’. Truffaut, talking about how the film moves beyond simple entertainment, goes on to say that Stewart, through his role as a peeping tom, sees ‘a display of human weaknesses and people in pursuit of happiness’ when contemplating the actions of his neighbours. Unfortunately, part of that pursuit results in the murder of Mrs Thorwald. Hitchcock loved a good murder.
But the murder is secondary to the comedy. Literary genre is one of the three areas that Leaving Cert students will be focusing on and it would be interesting to see how they label the film. Thriller? Murder Mystery? Romantic Comedy? Comedy? Mid life crisis cry for help?
For me the film is a comedy, often a black comedy. How can it be anything else? Jefferies lives in a fantasy world that only Hollywood can create. He’s a peeping tom, he’s pompous, he openly ogles women in front of his girlfriend, he constantly tells his girlfriend how inadequate she is, he claims to be working class but has the lifestyle of the upper middle class. If he had a beard we’d call him a hipster.
His girlfriend is a woman so much more financially successful than him, a woman such quick wit and intelligence, a woman of such style, of such bravery, and, let’s be honest here, a woman of such youth and beauty that Jefferies should only ever encounter her on a business footing, begging her for a commission. But, then again, he doesn’t like to lower himself to take on fashion photography.
If we looked at the first twenty minutes of E.T., the first twenty minutes of a secondary student film studies experience, we should look at the end of Rear Window, the last bit of film studies the student will experience.
We’ll start with Lisa climbing up the fire escape in her flowery yellow dress. Dresses and colours are important in this film. So far we have seen Lisa wear dresses, designed by Edith Head, that connect her with other characters in the apartment square. We have seen her wear a black dress matching Miss Torso towards the start of the film, a green one like Miss Lonely Hearts later on, when she brings the food from 21. This movement from dress to dress, from association to association, corresponds with how Lisa is perceived by Jefferies, or maybe how she perceives herself. The women’s clothes rhyme with each other, connect each individual into a whole, into a cohesive group of people who are used to being watched.
This is one of the more interesting aspects of the film. Laura Mulvey’s famous essay on the male gaze and Rear Window has been debated back and forth but it seems to me that the women in the film know that they are subject to the male gaze and are in constant reaction to this gaze.
We see her climb the ladder from Jefferies perspective before cutting back to a close up of him fidgeting. Is he worried about Lisa or is he just a man frustrated because he is unable to control the actions of those around him?
We cut back and the camera, from afar, slowly pans up with her climb. She is agile, the dress swishing but not hindering her movements. Neither do her high heels.
Cut to Jefferies shout-whispering orders at her. He’s voiceless as well as immobile.
We cut back and forth as she climbs in and runs through the apartment. Jefferies, inevitably, takes out his long-lensed camera, the better to watch his girlfriend. Here we have an image that has aged better than it should have. A man with a camera watching his girlfriend through the lens is one step away from the camera imbedded into every mobile phone and how some men use them; watching, recording, turning the opposite sex into an object, something to be owned and controlled.
The music intensifies as Hitchcock uses the lens to allow himself a long-lensed zoom into the apartment window as Lisa goes through Thorwald’s belongings.
When Stella comes back, the camera has moved to allow her a more formal entrance through the chiaroscuro lighting that will come to a head in the climax of the scene. It is Stella that wants to give Lisa ‘another minute’ before Jefferies calls the police. It is Stella that notices Miss Lonely hearts.
The women are in control now, they are the ones who remain calm, remain aware of the events as they unfold.
Stella tell Jefferies to call the police as the camera looks down on Miss Lonely-hearts apartment. Down. What other angle could have been used? Where else could her apartment be except below everyone else’s?
Of course Stella’s theme is heard as Jefferies gets through to the operator. The use of diegetic music is one of the more interesting aspects of how Hitchcock tells his story. Thematic, symbolic, character driven and character revealing, the music acts as an authorial voice commenting wryly on the action as it evolves on the expensive soundstage.
‘Mr Jefferies, the music stopped her.’ Stella commentates for us and Jefferies as Miss Lonely-hearts reconsiders her suicide attempt. Hitchcock cuts to a wide shot to reveal Lisa framed by Thorwald’s apartment window in a rhyme with Miss Lonely-hearts directly below her. Women are connected here again, the cinematic windows replicating our own screens. Hitchcock isn’t shying away from the fact of the male gaze, he is challenging us with it.
We are distracted by this rhyming couplet and barely register the return of the murderer. Just as one woman has been saved another is in peril. Hitchcock would never let these things end so neatly.
CinÉireann / March 2018 17
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