How does architecture play a role in creating tension in Hitchcock's Rear Window?

Hitchcock famously had the entire apartment-courtyard set built and his focus on authenticity was such that, unsatisfied with the height of the apartment blocks (the tallest of which stood 40 feet), he had the basement of the sound studio ripped out and the claustrophobic courtyard built down into it. As a result Jeff’s second floor apartment was in reality at ground level. Many of the apartments also benefited from running water and electricity, and could be lived in, if so desired.
Alfred Hitchcock – Rear Window
Having created the world of Rear Window in line with real world architecture, for Hitchcock to then invert the rules of how architecture is used in the real world throws the audience. Windows become doorways: traditional means of accessing the outside world, they now become the means of access to the occupants and their secrets, both voyeuristically and physically, with characters climbing in and falling out of them. Private rooms become public spaces, with their inhabitants chained to their separate miseries: Miss Lonelyhearts trapped in her empty apartment, the nameless songwriter trapped in his bustling one – both looking for the same thing. From observing and preserving the laws of architecture through only showing these snippets of others lives from the confines of Jeff’s own apartment, Hitchcock builds palpable claustrophobia. A feeling intensified by the purposely restrictive courtyard acting as a heat trap for the negative emotions gestated by the film.
Pevsner was right about the inescapability of buildings. But when captured and created for cinema, architecture can transcend physical space to become indicative of a film’s intentions, central to its psychological and philosophical motifs, becoming doorways beyond the literal.
Gabriel Gane, March 2016
You can read Gabriel’s first essay on cinema for Miniclick here…

With the release of High-Rise, Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of JG Ballard’s novel, the manner in which architecture is used as a cinematic device is in the spotlight again.
Through Blade Runner, Rear Window and Inception (spoilers below for all three), via Harry Potter, Star Wars, Alien and The Shining, Miniclick’s resident film writer Gabriel Gane explores some of the most notable occasions in which architecture has played a starring role.
Architecture in Film – A Foundation for Story
In the introduction to Nikolaus Pevsner’s An Outline Of European Architecture he says this; “We can avoid intercourse with what people call the Fine Arts, but we cannot escape buildings and the subtle but penetrating effects of their character, noble or mean, restrained or ostentatious, genuine or meretricious.” Pevsner makes the point that architecture transcends other forms of art through its capacity to enclose and impinge on space, having an emotional as well as aesthetic impact.
Today the pace of life is such that many people frequently fail to stand still and consider their surroundings: architecture it seems has become for most, nothing out of the ordinary precisely because it defines our everyday life. We move among it, inhabit it; it’s our beehive, our bird’s nest and so it becomes largely invisible to many of us. And yet, in the cinematic world the opposite seems true. We marvel, we run, we creep with our heroes and villains, through architectural landscapes.
Think of the wondrous scenes that take place in Hogwarts (Harry Potter 1-8) or the playful ones in the eponymous setting of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Now think of how many times you felt a creeping sense of fear as Danny peddled his trike through the empty corridors of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, or Captain Dallas squeezing himself along the claustrophobic air ducts of the Nostromo in Alien. Through these few examples it is clear that the surroundings of our characters, as well as their predicaments, help shape our emotional response.
Wes Anderson – Grand Budapest Hotel
Architecture also drives plot. In Christopher Nolan’s Inception architecture literally and figuratively divides the characters; the action is split thematically into different maze like structures, or levels, that are built within the plot by an architect: the characters navigate between them, moving forward towards a common goal, some getting lost along the way.

It has infrastructure, in shops, bars, street restaurants, public and private transport, hell it even has parking meters. This is where Blade Runner’s strengths in design stem from, the attention to the real, and the real obstacles thrown in the way of our hero.
Ridley Scott – Blade Runner
When Deckard finds himself cornered by Roy in J.F.’s flat near the end of the film, Scott presents him with very real physical barriers. In fact, so real are these challenges that most of the tension arises from watching him overcome them, rather then being chased down by the murderous replicant. We watch him push through rotting floors and scale the outside of skyscrapers – scenes that aren’t all that uncommon in the ever popular action franchises. Consider similar sequences in The Fifth Element, in itself not a bad movie, but which holds little tension compared to Blade Runner because the logic of the world created wasn’t built from the ground up, introducing its hostile highs before it’s mundane lows and so to not be truly relatable.
Ridley Scott – Blade Runner
Luc Besson – The Fifth Element
A created cinematic world doesn’t have to be fantastical however; Hitchcock’s Rear Window employs the same tropes to great effect. Where Blade Runner’s success is with relatable public space, Rear Window’s is with private, regarding the relationships between locked rooms and their as equally locked residents. This compartmentalisation of characters and plotlines within separate rooms, either conjoining or across a courtyard builds an innate tension, in turn breeding paranoia and perversion, leading Hitchcock to subvert his own created worlds; building in methods of spying and having characters enter and leave rooms through non-traditional modes.
Alfred Hitchcock – Rear Window
Hitchcock doesn’t limit this to Rear Window, in Psycho, Norman spies on Marion as she undresses via a peephole in his parlour wall, a symptom of the psychosis yet to be revealed. This voyeurism is only heightened in Rear Window, a story centred around the very act of watching, with the windows of Jeff’s neighbours representative of movie screens, each with their own cast of characters and plot.

For anyone who is an avid filmgoer, it is no great revelation that watching movies is an extension of voyeurism; after all, what are we doing but looking into the lives of others, observing in a socially acceptable way, as opposed to peeping into the windows of neighbors or strangers. We are all, to an extent, curious to know what other people are doing, it’s human nature, however most people can keep these voyeuristic tendencies limited to the socially accepted variety. Alfred Hitchcock was well aware of this trait in humans and he suckers us into compliance right from the beginning with the casting of James Stewart. Who better than Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Straight Lace to lure you into peeping in on your neighbors and making you think there is nothing weird about it.
“Rear Window” is based on a short story called, “It Had to be Murder,” by William Irish aka Cornell Woolrich, originally published in 1942. Hitchcock preserved much of Woolrich’s story though as expected, some changes were made, for example the Grace Kelly character, Lisa Freemont was a new addition. Screenwriter John Michael Hayes, in the first of four films he would write for/with Hitchcock, was hired. Stewart and Kelly were selected early on to be the leads, so even before writing the script Hayes knew who the leads would be and could shape their character traits accordingly.
Generally considered one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, “Rear Window” manages to create nonstop suspense despite the limited mobility of its hero. The film remains a prime example of Hitchcock’s style of unremitting tension, building a nerve-racking situation upon situation with little or no let up. There are no bold cinematic moment’s just pure suspense built upon suspicions and actions of the characters involved.
There are at least three recurring motifs that run through the film; marriage, sexual tension and voyeurism.
Throughout the film, Lisa is constantly pushing a reluctant Jeff to get married. Jeff however, cannot see himself fitting into Lisa’s world of glamour and high fashion, nor can he visualize Lisa, who dresses in her personal life just like the stylish 5th Avenue model she is, fit into his living out of a suitcase existence traveling from one forsaken place to another. On a certain level, Jeffries dissatisfaction with Lisa’s marriage demands mirror Thorwald’s frustrations with his wife, both men feel cornered and trapped.

First, before I get into my main topic, I just have to say that this film reminded me that Grace Kelly was one of the most beautiful actresses of her time. Thank you to Alfred Hitchcock for providing such wonder visions of her in “Rear Window”. Now, back to the topic at hand.
Going to the movies and watching a film is, at its very heart, a voyeuristic activity. We sit and watch other people’s lives and stories from afar framed by the screen and form opinions and cast judgements on what we are watching. Alfred Hitchcock throws that voyeurism in our faces with “Rear Window”.
“Rear Window” is a great example of what a master director with a master editor can accomplish. We watch a mostly point-of-view presentation of how a story is created in one’s mind and how that story can infect others that surround a character. We watch as L.B. Jefferies, confined to his wheelchair, becomes involved in the other lives of his neighbors as he voyeuristically watches their lives unfold, framed by the windows of their apartments.
We watch “Jeff” as he watches his neighbors and we become consumed by what he is seeing through classic A-B-A editing. A: We see him watching something. B: We cut to see what he is seeing. A: We cut back to get his reaction to what he is seeing. As the Bordwell reading stated, “the Kuleshov effect operates here: Our mind connects the two parts of space”, Jeff’s apartment and the courtyard, without the use of an establishing shot. This sequence of cuts is repeated over and over again to develop the movie-like story of his neighbors where he forms his opinions and casts judgements on what he is seeing and hearing. Given the lack of details, he fills in the gaps by coming to his own conclusions based purely on his visual input from afar. This is the Kuleshov effect on the part of Jeff himself. He connects the dots in his own mind based simply on what he sees and hears while he watches the movie of his neighbors unfold.
For me, “Rear Window” was a film of a man watching a movie of his neighbors. Each window in the courtyard presents a screen for us to voyeuristically watch as Jeff also voyeuristically watches his neighbors progress through their everyday lives and, oh yes, commits murder.

This culminates dramatically as Cobb watches helplessly as Mal jumps from a window to her death. It can also unify, for example, a bond of trust is made between Luke and Leia as they swing to safety across a man made chasm in Star Wars – A New Hope. In fact, plot can be driven so much so by architecture that it can serve as a door to entire genres and sub genres: the courtroom drama, the office comedy, the haunted house.
Coming back to Pevsner’s statement on the emotional captivity of buildings, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner certainly encapsulates this idea. Set in a future LA, where society relates status to architecture, with the God-like powerful dwelling in pyramids (see also Metropolis’s New Tower of Babel), all the way down to the disease and dereliction of the streets below. Resulting in a society built vertically, both metaphorically and literally. The opulence of Tyrell’s pyramid set against the poverty of those the pyramid stands upon mirrors many of the films central themes; religion and man, design verses nature and inequality. Which are in turn personified in the naturally ‘defective’ J.F. Sebastian and the unnaturally faultless Roy Batty.
Ridley Scott – Blade Runner
From Deckard’s claustrophobic, cave-like apartment, to Hannibal Chew’s frozen grotto of a laboratory, Scott’s vision of the future does a good job at making us feel trapped, but it’s the street scenes that hold the most subterranean echoes. Drawing heavily from designs by visual futurist Syd Mead and completely masking large sections of Warner Bros’ back-lot, the street sets of Blade Runner’s LA still hold up as one of the best and to many, most accurate depictions of future urban living put to celluloid. Pipework, steam-gushing vents and neon smother everything, watching these scenes one can’t help but think of Bowellism and of Roger’s and Piano’s Pompidou Centre in Paris. Pre-existing architecture is bastardised too; heavy, cartoonish columns mask the clean lines of the Bradbury building. All this accumulates to oppress the characters and ultimately the audience, as if we’re squeezing through the veins of a city that no longer welcomes humans. The city, however, still functions with measurable logic.

- Title: Rear Window
- IMDB: link
“Well, if possible, both.”
With the recent release of Disturbia I thought this would be a good time to introduce a new feature and take a look back at the film which it pays homage to. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is considered one of the director’s finest films by both critics (it earned a 100% Fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes and ranked #42 on AFI’s 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time) and fans (at the time of this review it ranks #16 on IMDB’s Top 250 Films of All Time).
Alfred Hitchcock, ah, there was a man who knew how to tell a tale. The joy in Rear Window is the simplicity. One man looking into the windows of his neighbors discovers a little about them, and a little about himself, and uncovers what he believes is evidence of cold-blooded murder. It’s a film of slow revelations, of constant building tension, of troubled relationships, and of learning the truth about yourself as well as your neighbors. If you enjoy suspense then you could search long and hard trying to find a flick better than this one.
Stuck at home with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) begins to examine the world around him finding numerous worlds in the apartments across the courtyard. Over the past six weeks these strangers have become his form of entertainment and his only way to experience the outside world.
Through his window Jefferies spies on a beautiful dancer (Georgine Darcy), a songwriter (Ross Bagdassarian), a pair of newlyweds (Rand Harper, Havis Davenport), a sculptor (Jesslyn Fax), a couple with a precocious dog (Sara Berner, Frank Cady), a lonely single woman (Judith Evelyn), and a henpecked salesman (Raymond Burr) and his wife (Irene Winston). Each character has their own story and tells us quite a bit about Jefferies and his views of the world and love.
Hitchcock could easily have used the extras merely as window dressing, but even as Jefferies obsesses with the salesman, his eyes always take time into looking into each of the separate worlds (in an amazing set built on a studio sound stage).

"I'm not much on rear window ethics."Rear Window is a classic 1954 thriller, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly.L. B. "Jeff" Jeffries (Stewart) is a photojournalist who broke his leg during a dangerous assignment. He is confined to his small Greenwich Village apartment while recuperating and, out of boredom, begins to spy on his various neighbors across the courtyard. He sees one of the neighbors, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), acting suspiciously. He eventually becomes convinced that Thorwald killed his wife Anna (Irene Winston), a bedridden invalid who has gone missing. Jeff's girlfriend, Lisa Carol Fremont (Kelly), doesn't believe him at first, but soon changes her mind. After trying and failing to convince Jeff's police-detective friend Lt. Doyle (Wendell Corey) of the crime, Jeff, Lisa, and Jeff's nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) come up with a plan to catch the killer themselves.Regarded as one of Hitchcock's very best films. It was remade in 1998 as a Made-for-TV Movie starring the late Christopher Reeve, who was actually paralyzed from the neck down. The 2007 film Disturbia with Shia LaBeouf is a modern day retelling, and it's far from the only one.
Tropes used in Rear Window:
- Adaptation Expansion: The film is based on Cornell Woolrich's short story "It Had to Be Murder," which didn't have the characters of Lisa and Stella.
- Adult Fear: Mrs. Thorwald's death, given that the disabled are especially prone to abuse and violence.
- Which foreshadows Jeff's situation at the end.
- The possibility of a once presumably happy marriage being strained to the point of adultery and murder by one's illness.
- Author Appeal: Grace Kelly is one of many blonde leading ladies for Hitchcock.
- Awful Wedded Life: The two scenes of the Thorwalds before Mrs. Thorwald vanishes make it clear their marriage is this.
- Binocular Shot: At several points we view things through Jeff's binoculars and/or telephoto lens.
- Blinding Camera Flash: Used to stall the killer.

The result is an unnatural starkness that indicates something is hidden. Back lighting and fill lighting are kept to a minimum, resulting in sharp, angular shadows cast ominously on the wall and ceiling above Norman.
Hitchcock also deftly uses camera angles to reveal all the audience needs to know about the troubled mind of Norman Bates. As he did with the lighting, Hitchcock shapes the scene in terms of contrasts. We see Marion sitting comfortably in her chair, leaning slightly forward, enjoying a sandwich Norman has made for her. Hitchcock places the camera near eye level so the audience sees Marion as two people might see each other while sitting and talking. There is nothing unusual in this. In fact, this particular angle provides the audience with a sense of normalcy and comfort in Marion's presence. Hitchcock, however, moves out of the comfort zone to shoot Norman from an unnaturally low perspective. These two camera angles in-and-of themselves mean nothing. Only when they are juxtaposed can any meaning be taken. The shift to Norman's angle suggests that Norman's world is skewed, off balance, out of kilter. We feel uncomfortable in this position because we are not used to viewing the world from such an angle and to do so makes it difficult to extract meaning.
In Norman's parlor, we usually see Marion from the front, so her full face is in view.
However, the camera frequently moves to the left side of Norman, obscuring his other side.
Hitchcock's mise-en-scene probably does more to capture the intent of the characters than any one element in the entire scene. It also emphasizes the duality that exists not only within Norman Bates but within all of us. For instance, Marion is surrounded by scenic details that make her a sympathetic character, not without flaw--after all, she did steal forty thousand dollars-- but certainly not one to condemn too harshly. She sits at ease in her chair. In front of her is a tray with a small meal prepared by Norman. On the tray is a pitcher of milk--not just a glass but an entire pitcher. The detail has less to do with the quantity of milk (Marion, in fact, drinks none of it) as it does with the pitcher itself. This pitcher is white and has soft, graceful lines that suggest Marion's essential goodness.

Americans in general don't like people standing too close, but an average New Yorker needs Yankee Stadium around his body to feel truly comfortable. So observe, too, the way New Yorkers react to someone who, whether deliberately or out of ignorance, doesn't get it and insists on full-frontal contact with another passenger--the dirty looks, the impatient sighs, the way the New Yorker twists away from the clueless interloper.
The murder drives the plot, but it is far from the only thing that grabs you in that vast array of windows so impossibly arranged across Jeff's courtyard. You also focus on the composer, who is having a hard time with his art despite living in the most desirable apartment in the building (that's a very New York observation, sorry). There's Miss Lonelyhearts, kindhearted but hating every minute of being single. There's Miss Torso, doing her calisthenics and entertaining an all-male party (why all men?). There's the (probably) childless couple, lowering the wife's beloved dog into the garden every morning for a romp. There's the honeymoon couple...well, they're the most boring for sure.
The classic interpretation of Rear Window is as a metaphor for both moviemaking and movie-watching, Jeff (Stewart) standing in for both Alfred Hitchcock himself and those people out there in the dark. Rear Window is one of cinema's greatest uses of the subjective camera. Our point of view across the courtyard is always Jeff's, keeping our identification with him. So his dilemmas become ours, which is why the Siren thinks the Jeff-as-film-director-and-audience viewpoint is true, sure--but it isn't nearly probing enough. Where's the quandary in that? In both cases, people are just doing their jobs, the director making the movie and the audience watching it. Both acts are morally neutral. You can throw around the word "voyeur," but it's the reaction to what you see that counts. In the context of 1954, with Joe Breen and his minions still on smut patrol, it's amusing to note how Hitchcock introduces a non-stop series of sexual innuendos, from Jeff's (ahem) highly extendable telephoto lens to Lisa (Grace Kelly) holding up a filmy negligee and announcing "Preview of coming attractions."

Using this method, the audience basis maintain their interest in the movie and suspense can be delivered more efficiently.Vital to any Hitchcockian film is what is known as information. Information is something the cases do not see, yet the audience does. In most cases, the information is usually dangerous and is presented in the opening of a scene. As the scene continues, the audience is reminded of that information which could jeopardize the ignorant characters. For example, in the 1976 movie Family Plot, the audience sees a shot of a car leaking brake fluid, yet the characters in the car have no nous this is happening. Watching scenes with information build up tension, and it is one of the most popular techniques Hitchco ck has made famous.Surprisingly, one would not think to include anything comical in a thriller movie, yet Hitchcock believed suspense doesnt have any apprise if its not balanced by humor (Bays 1). By using contrasted characters and settings, it made his films more amusing to watch. In order to intensify the audiences anxiety, Hitchcock utilized understatement, which was a representation of turning the attention of an action scene to insignificant and petty character features or actions. In Rear windowpane, the protagonist Jeff tries to stall the villains attack by egregious him with flashing camera bulbs. The great effort the villain uses to regain his vision is amusing, yet at the very(prenominal) time is suspenseful because of his steady and eerie approach. Hitchcock also frequently inserted a character which mocked a real matter such as murder. This is usually a sign of foreshadowing, as seen in Rear Window when Stella (the nurse) laughs about the idea of a killing in an ad jacent apartment. Irony is also evident in Hitchcocks films because he places characters in terrible situations against bright and joyful settings. He thought the more happy-go lucky the setting, the greater kick you get from the sudden introduction of drama (Bays 3). An excellent example of irony is in The bustle With Harry, where a dead body appears with a beautiful fall scenery.The final suspense method is none other than the twist ending. Hitchcock never wanted his films to have a predictable ending because it would destroy the entire point of putting suspense into the audience. In the key moment of Saboteur, Barry Kane corners Fry, the real saboteur, on the top of the Statue of Liberty.

Before “Rear Window,” the great director spent several years trying to see how he could set his films in a constricted space and include plenty of witty dialogue, while still engaging in what he called “pure cinema” (i.e., primarily visual storytelling) in films like the cutting-free “Rope,” the 3-D “Dial M for Murder,” and, most limiting of all, “Life Boat.” In “Rear Window” he at last came up with an ingenious way to have his self-limited cake and eat it too. He shot the film entirely within what is probably the single greatest and most elaborate single set in the history of cinema. Hitchcock, a draftsman and set designer early in his career, devised the set in such a way as to tell both the main story and all the reality-TV/pantomime subplots in an environmentally seamless manner. Still, Hitchcock, always the complete filmmaker, also employed a more realistic type of sound design that made heavy use of environmental sound and “source” music. Eliminating traditional underscoring, Hitchcock chose to make Franz Waxman’s jazz score, as well as such early ‘50s pop hits as “Mona Lisa” and “That’s Amore,” sound as if they’re coming from neighboring radios and phonographs. On the other hand, Hitch was never about realism, and the set is -- obviously and gloriously -- a set, and sound effects are frequently exaggerated for emotional impact. Forever an expressionist and almost never a realist, Hitchcock’s creative choices suggest reality while avoiding any attempt at recreating it.
Much has been written and said about Alfred Hitchcock’s purported neglect of actors. The truth is, that while he was no “actor’s director” in the normal sense, he was also no George Lucas; he nearly always got good performances when he cast performers he respected. In “Rear Window” he has two of the greatest leads in Hollywood history, one of whom he was kind of in love with (it wasn’t Stewart). Grace Kelly gives probably her best performance in a part written especially for her, as a professional fashion maven with a core of iron. James Stewart has no problem holding onto his dignity while performing the entire film in his pajamas, nor does he falter in holding onto our sympathy while being more than a little mean at times to the wonderful Lisa/Grace Kelly.

It’s a feast to the eye. The officer walks up to the car, we see Marion sleeping in her. A few knocks on the window later, she wakes up in a hurry. We see the same look in her eyes as when she saw her employer crossing the street. The next shot serves as both an eye-line matching shot and a close-up of the expressionless police officer. By now, like Marion, the viewer suspects she’s been caught. It turns out, he’s just checking if something’s wrong. Marion acts “like something is wrong” and so he asks for her driver’s license. As soon as he leaves and Marion drives off, the horrifying orchestra starts again.
We get a few rear-view mirror shots as she tries to lose the officer till he takes a turn and leaves her alone. Shortly after, Marion trades her car for another one. Both the viewer and Marion see that the police officer is back. He studies her from across the street like a suspicious stalker. Hitchcock’s fear of cops tightens the tension. More importantly, we are introduced to the third suspicious character, the car salesman, the first being the boss, and the second, the police officer. Marion is doing a terrible job of getting away with crime. Afterall, she’s no professional, just an everyday woman.
We rarely get to see scenes like that in thrillers; scenes that serve little purpose to the story but are there to put us on the edge of our seats driving the plot forwards. These short scenes are a rarity and a treasure. Hitchcock is simply playing piano with the audiences’ nerves. By now the viewer is in the midst of a getaway thriller. Keep in mind that all these tiny scenes are a distraction of the bigger picture. After, the high-pressured car salesman scenes, we move forward to more medium shots of the steering wheel, Marion, and the fading city in the background. This time, she bites on her lower lip as we hear the narration or an imagination of a conversation between the suspicious police officer and the doubtful salesman. Hitchcock knew that people generally do most of their thinking when they’re alone. Like before we sleep or when we drive alone in an empty highway. These scenes are very psychological in that for the briefest of moments the viewer becomes Marion.
Gradually, her facial expression changes from scared to confident.

Hitchcock has used close ups of Marion’s feet as she enters the bath, and quickly and forcefully draws the curtain closed to imply that Marion is blocking out the world; and escaping the crimes she has committed and entering her own sense of self security. The way she traps herself in the shower indicates that she is trapped by her desperation. Hitchcock has perhaps used the shower curtain as a way of portraying the way that Marion is separated from reality.
When she turns on the shower the diegetic sound of the water running dominates the mise-en-scene, it also creates a sense of realism allowing the audience to relate to how naïve and unsuspecting she is. Hitchcock has used various angles and close ups of Marion’s head in order for the audience to see her emotions and allow the audience to relate to Marion. The ‘Worms eye view’ shot of the shower head is used to make the water seem menacing and consuming – this connotes danger, but also make the audience think that Marion is small, and very vulnerable at this point. Marion is having an affair with a married man and has stolen $40,000 of his money, therefore fitting the traditional conventions of a femme fatale; her deviance has sealed her fate; and the audience are aware of this.
Norman Bates murders Marion; his last name indicates that he is someone that preys and ‘baits’ on other people. His character also keeps stuffed birds; this can be related to Marion Crane because her surname is a bird. Hitchcock has used irony to connote that Marion might become part of his collection- which happens.
The camera angle cuts to a medium establishing shot of the Marion and the shower curtain, which
reveals to the audience a silhouette. The camera angle does not change, but the silhouette becomes closer to the shower curtain, Marion is oblivious and unsuspecting, the audience can see that she is not safe however; and this is because Alfred Hitchcock has used dramatic irony in this scene of the film. The tension and suspense builds as the audience are forced to realise that the figure has aggressive intent as well as questioning amongst themselves who’s silhouette it is. The speed of the diegetic sound increases as the murderer comes closer to the curtain- this allowed the audience to foresee what will happen without the use of dialogue.

But someone is. Look at the shadow on Sam's shirt.
When the old lady is gone, the threat seems over.
Ah, close-up! Here is “a new possible menace.”
Sam and Lila are oblivious to the threat.
Then, Sam can feel himself being watched …
But by Bob at the desk.
Bob leaves and Sam and Lila believe they are alone. They are thus vulnerable to the possible menace outside ...
The man steps in. And by "in," I mean all the way in – as tight as the close-up can get and still hold his face.
Sam and Lila are still oblivious to the man in the hat ...
Until he speaks. Classic horror reaction shot!
The man in the hat steps closer.
Uncomfortably close. Out of focus.
Hitchcock cuts to a predatory view over his shoulder. Is he a menace?
Sam is fearful until Arbogast introduces himself as a private investigator.
With that, the man in the hat is eliminated as a menace and the tension is released.
Before we go, let’s look at one more scene from Psycho involving Arbogast in which Hitchcock uses his close-ups carefully. In the scene below, Arbogast shows up at the Bates Motel.
Initially, Norman and Arbogast are shown in a rather distant two-shot, with Arbogast lower than Bates, a subservient position.
Inside the hotel office, as Arbogast begins his questioning, they’re now on equal footing.
Norman is holding his own until Arbogast asks to look at the registry …
Knowing Marion’s name is in the book, now Norman feels threatened and Hitchcock goes to a close-up.
Arbogast smells blood in the water and gets his own close-up. He’s on to something.
Now even the picture of Marion gets a close-up.
And so it goes ...
Until Norman worms his way out of the conversation and Arbogast backs off.
Hitchcock was a firm believer in storyboarding. Then again, so is George Lucas. Careful planning alone can’t make for a great film. Still, there’s something about purposefulness that I’ll always find rewarding.

Janet Leigh’s performance shines in the next scenes. We return to her room. There is no need for dialogue; we know what she’s thinking when her desperate eyes land on the envelope. Like the greatest of silent performers, Leigh expresses more through facial reactions than words. Few actresses can pull this off, she does. After she decides to run away with the money, the editing becomes more and more interesting.
Hitchcock uses a medium shot of the main character, Marion Crane, as she drives away from her hometown. The shot shows her face, part of the steering wheel, and the background, which includes the sky. The shot then changes from that particular medium shot to what is regarded as an eye-line matching shot, in which we as the audience see the highway through her eyes. This is the second time Hitchcock uses this shot (the first being her staring at the envelope repeatedly). The minute she steps into her car, the narration starts.
The narration serves as the voice in her head. At first, we hear what she suspects Sam will react like upon seeing her with the money. Hitchcock just slipped us into her shoes. He doesn’t only establish her as the main character, he confirms it. We see what she sees (eye-line matching shots), we feel what she feels (the urge to steal the open envelope full of cash), and now Hitchcock makes her share her thoughts with us. She bites her finger in a traffic light stop. After that we get the eye-line matching shot. People cross the street in a hurry. Their hurry is nothing compared to that of Marion, especially when her eyes meet those of her employer’s. We get a close up shot of her smiling at him. Her boss smiles back, then stops realizing she’s supposed to be sick at home or on her way to a bank. He looks back at her, only this time more suspiciously. Enter Herrmann’s score, the plot thickens.
At first Marion’s expression suggests fear. Then we get a couple of night shots with bright lights striking our eyes. Her facial expression is more relaxed now. The following morning, Hitchcock is generous enough to provide a beautiful deep focus shot. On the lower left corner of the screen the trunk of Marion’s car, behind it, a police officer’s car, on the right, the long endless highway and in the background empty hills.

Figure 1. ‘Rope Movie Poster'
What has to be one of the masters of suspense filled movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” (1948) is certainly a theatrical performance that will draw the audience in, push them away, and draw them in once again.
Figure 2. 'Viewing the killing'
Based on a single set of a lavish apartment, “Rope” (1948) is a rather audacious film about a subtly-hinted-about homosexual couple who commit the act of murder within this apartment, and then host a dinner party with the victims loved ones whilst the corpse is hidden in a nearby chest. The terms ‘theatrical’ and ‘audacious’ come to mind when watching this film, as it is portrayed to the audience with an exaggerated manner, acting-wise, much like a play production being executed on a live stage. By live, it is also being referred to the fact that there are no jump cuts within the film (or so it may seem), just one prolonged take. The cameras movements are hardly smooth, they are somewhat unsteady and have a tendency to waver. As Pamela Hutchinson observes, “This clunkiness can be part of the film's claustrophobic strength though: the coffin-chest is rarely out of shot, and the camera follows the actors around every square inch of the confined set. They're trapped, and so is the audience.” (Hutchinson, P. 2012)
Figure 3. 'Brandon and Philip being questioned by their former tutor'
The audience is certainly made to feel a bit on edge, but that is what Hitchcock wants to achieve in his work. Hitchcock wants to torture the audience and have the suspense ‘kill them’. The effect of creating this piece using (or creating the illusion of) real time is daring, therefore it leaves the audience constantly waiting until the point where they shout towards the screen, “They’re going to find out!”. As Vincent Canby states, “In ''Rope,'' Hitchcock is less concerned with the characters and their moral dilemmas than with how they look, sound and move, and with the overall spectacle of how a perfect crime goes wrong.” (Canby, V. 1984) Much like the main character Brandon, who was one half of the pair who committed the murder, Hitchcock thought himself to be rather clever.

Hitchcock was never one to let random objects creep into his frame, so I believe this sign is absolutely intentional. It’s as if fate is pointing Scottie in the direction of his only escape — advice he ignores, giving the sign one last look as he ultimately approaches Judy’s door.
Later, Scottie and Judy pass the sign together, missing another warning by their director.
Just in case you are still skeptical, Hitchcock drives it home with the “rule of three.” After our sympathies are fully flipped to Judy, we see her face the exact same “Fire Escape” dilemma. As she returns from the salon, made over as Madeline, she too has a chance to escape. She ignores the warning and agrees to continue her charade.
Parallelism and Familiar Image
The technique of familiar image is not limited to the fire escape sign. This sort of parallelism pervades the entire film.
Note the matching shots of archways at the Spanish mission before and after Madeline’s death. By bookending it, Hitch suggests the event would have happened regardless of Scottie’s actions, because destiny dictates it (and the filmmaker’s vision demands it). The first archway shot is fate predetermined; the second is fate fulfilled.
Note also the parallelism of Madeline and Judy appearing in various hotel windows. The shot of Madeline in the window of the McKittrick Hotel parallels the shot of Judy in the window at the Empire Hotel (another clue to proactive viewers). If you consider Hitch in terms of the auteur theory, these window images also resemble the window shots of Mrs. Bates in Psycho and any number of window shots of the neighbors in Rear Window.
Hitchcock also uses parallel camera movements behind desk lamps (literal “light bulbs”) as a symbol of telling the truth. First, the camera rounds a desk lamp in Scottie’s apartment as Madeline lies to him. Scottie “thinks” he’s had a light-bulb moment. Later, the camera similarly rounds a desk lamp in Judy’s apartment as she reveals the truth in a handwritten note. This time, the camera rounds the desk lamp in the opposite direction, as if to say this is the actual light-bulb moment.
What Lies Above
Of all of Hitchcock’s familiar images, though, one in particular puzzled me the longest: recurring shots of various ceilings.

For example, in Mr and Mrs Thorwald, Jeff sees a man who is stuck with an invalid and nagging wife. She belongs in that rarefied atmosphere of Park Avenue, you know, expensive restaurants, and literary cocktail parties.
The disparity between their approaches creates tension in their relationship. Because even though the shot shows him scratching his feet, it actually does not mean he was scratching his feet. He drifts away from the real world and enters his own private imagination. Relationship Story Backstory Their problems stem from their differing lifestyles: However, the audience doesn't know this and this mystery woman's intentions aren't known.
Mulvey suggests that the importance of her fancy dress is to draw in the man and grab his attention. As the camera draws nearer, his face is completely muted by the shadow of an approaching figure.
She arrives dressed in a beautifully, ornate dress, with not a hair out of place, while Jeff is in his pajamas. The video effectively curates shots that are both visually and thematically alike.
Film research paper Authorial Shots of "Rear Window" essay presented on this page should not be viewed as a sample of our on-line writing service. We see his cast on his leg with his name, L. Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. Then I had two fall showings - twenty blocks apart.
The Voyeurism of Rear Window. The second last shot of the montage is of a black-screen a sound of what seems to be moaning. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Jeff raises a grin in the darkness and the camera shifts to his viewpoint.
When Lisa goes into Thorwald's apartment, we are taken into the movie a little bit because she is usually on our side of the view.Free Essay / Term Paper: Compare and Contrast the short story "Rear Window" and the movie "It had to be murder" On comparing and contrasting Cornell Woolrich's short story "Rear Window" (originally "It Had To Be Murder") to Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of the.
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- Bottle Movie: The action rarely leaves the perspective of Jeff's apartment, which means that the action is limited to Jeff's apartment, what he can see in the courtyard of the apartment complex and the windows of other apartments. The only time that the movie leaves this limited perspective is when Thorwald pushes Jeff out of his window.
- While the effect is similar, Rear Window was the opposite of most TV Bottle Episodes, shot to save money: The entire courtyard was constructed on a sound stage; one of the largest in film history at the time. This gave Hitchcock precise control over lighting and camera angles — on the enormous courtyard set he often had to give actors direction via radio while he was shooting from the opposite side.
- Bridal Carry: The newlyweds first enter their new apartment normally, getting everything settled with the landlord. Then they walk out just so he can carry her in this way.
- Book Ends: The film begins and ends with Jeff resting in his wheelchair.
- Bury Your Disabled: It appears that Mrs. Thorwald is an invalid and implied that the stress of caring for her led her husband to adultery and murder.
- Chekhov's Gun: The flashbulb (from the camera) that Jeff initially plans to use to signal Lisa to leave Thorwald's apartment comes in handy when Thorwald comes to Jeff's apartment. He uses the flash to stall Thorwald just long enough before Doyle and Lisa arrive to see what's happening.
- Closed Circle: Jeff can't leave his apartment because of his broken leg.
- Come Back to Bed, Honey: At the beginning of the movie, a newly wed couple moves into an apartment close to Jeff's. They close their blinds and are not seen for a while. After a few days, the man is seen leaning out of the window, and his wife calls him back.
- Creator Cameo: Hitch is seen tinkering with the clock in the songwriter's apartment.
- Deadpan Snarker: Stella and Jeff.
- Death of a Child: The dog and technically, Mrs. Thorwald—she's an adult, but she's disabled, a demographic usually covered by this trope.
- Does This Remind You of Anything? / Phallic Weapon / Something Else Also Rises / Visual Innuendo: Unable to see into an apartment with a pair of binoculars, Jeff picks up a telescopic lens—in other words, longer—and is visibly satisfied now that he can see better.

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Rear Window (1954), shot almost entirely from one room, focuses largely on what it means to observe and what it means to participate. As observers, we are watching, and as participants, we are engaging. But what happens when watching becomes participation? L.B. Jefferies, a temporarily disabled photographer, uses his apartment’s rear window to gaze into his neighbors’ lives. Jefferies, deriving pleasure from watching others, is a passive voyeur, but we must ask ourselves: are we any different? Watching a film and peeking through a neighbor’s window are both forms of active viewing. Through a clever use of continuous editing and cinematography, Hitchcock shows the audience just how voyeuristic they, like Jefferies, really are.
Alexander Hubers, ’15
Sponsor: Michelle Mouton

We see two separate actions play out in the same single take: (a) the clergy tending to Madeline’s dead body in the top left of the frame, and (b) Scottie staggering out of the church in a daze in the bottom right of the frame. Fans of Hitchcock’s entire career know that this is a tell-tale auteur icon of his, using an extreme high angle to denote a major turning point in the film (i.e. after Sebastian finds the wine bottle in Notorious, or after the U.N. stabbing in North By Northwest).
Blocking and Mise-en-Scene
As the bell tower high angle shows, few directors commanded the entire frame like Hitchcock. Vertigo features some of the greatest examples of mise-en-scene in any movie, visually hinting the plot’s secrets with hints we are too blind to see on first viewing.
First, take a second look at the scene where Elster first tells Scottie about Madeline’s possession. Watch how Hitchcock has Elster move up to a higher platform the minute he begins his ghost story, as if Elster were up on a stage, acting. Scottie sits and listens in the “audience” down below. Naturally, when the story ends, Elster returns back down to Scottie’s level, to talk logistics. Those rare viewers with a proactive eye for mise-en-scene might guess the twist right here; the rest of us are at Hitchcock’s mercy.
Such brilliant mise-en-scene continues throughout the film. As Scottie makes his way around San Francisco, try counting the numerous occasions where a church or bell tower appears behind him in the frame, foreshadowing his fate in the final scene.
Shadows and Mirrors
Hitchcock also uses shadows and mirrors to symbolize Madeline/Judy’s dual nature. The clearest example of her divided self comes in the shot where Scottie sees Judy silhouetted by the green light of a neon sign out the window. The outline of her body strips away all pretense of “Judy,” rendering her a carbon copy of Madeline.
As Hitchcock cuts to a frontal view, Judy’s half-lit face leaves no doubt as to her dual nature. Her eyes move from the shadows and into the light, as if desperately wanting to escape the bounds of her evil side.

|Hitch does his cameo in Rear Window.|
Photojournalist "Jeff" Jefferies (James Stewart) is stuck in an apartment with a broken leg and a cast when he'd rather be out covering action in far-flung places with exotic names. Jeff has a beautiful girlfriend named Lisa (Grace Kelly), but he fears proposing to her because he doesn't think her patrician, elegant manner will go well with the places he has to travel to [although nowhere is it written that the wife must accompany her husband on such assignments]. Bored and needing distraction, Jeff begins observing his neighbors (on a marvelous, detailed set that shows many different kinds of apartments and tenants), such as the voluptuous dancer across the way, a pair of newlyweds who disappear behind the shade after moving in, a frustrated composer of romantic music, and a woman he calls "Miss Lonelyhearts" (Judith Evelyn) who talks to imaginary dates while she's having supper and gets drunk in bars. Eventually Jeff focuses on a man named Thorwald (Raymond Burr), whose nagging wife disappears one afternoon and never comes back. Jeff has reasons to believe Thorwald murdered the woman -- and eventually gets both Lisa and his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) on his side -- but his smug detective friend Doyle (Wendell Corey) assures him that he checked and the woman really is out of town. But is she? Jeff and the ladies begin an investigation of their own that leads them into some serious danger. Some viewers of this wonderful film don't like being put in Jeff's position all the time, peering through windows, and find the film claustrophobic, but I can't agree. The movie, while imperfect, is very cinematic and well-made. It does take a while for the basic mystery plot to begin unfolding, but the two main characters and their dilemma -- two very different people in love but uncertain of how it will work out -- are interesting enough to hold the attention, and Stewart and Kelly give fine performances, along with Ritter, Evelyn and others. [This is another film like The Tingler in which the talented Evelyn gets across a character without really saying a word.] The movie builds in suspense and has a creepy and exciting finale. One thing Rear Window is missing is a great score by, say, Bernard Herrmann, but you can't have everything.

On Sunday evening, I watched ‘Rear Window’ for the first time. So captured was I by the movie that I watched it again the next day! I got so much more out of it during the second viewing and as I’ve been thinking about it over the last 24 hours, I’ve got even more out of it!
Everything about this movie is outstanding!
‘Rear Window’ is what I call an ‘up close and personal’ movie – it is almost theatre rather than a cinematic experience and it is that sense of theatre, my ‘closeness’ to the characters, which compounds the intensity. The action is all within a single courtyard, different apartments but all within the boundaries of the courtyard. When there is movement outside the courtyard, eg when the murder suspect, Lars Thorwald, leaves his apartment, we don’t see where he goes and, when he returns, we only see him when he enters the courtyard again.
Franz Waxman’s atmosphere-creating music score sets then scene.
Jeff – L.B. Jefferies – played so effortlessly by James Stewart, is a newspaper photographer, fearless, intrepid, and his heroism has landed him at home, in his apartment, at the height of a New York oppressive Summer, with a broken leg in a cast. His frustration is palpable and it is exacerbated when his editor phones him to tell him that an exciting assignment is coming his way but it is not to be – Jeff tells him that his cast isn’t coming off for another week. A little light comic relief is infused into the movie when we see Jeff’s pleasure at being able to scratch an itch under the cast thanks to a slim back scratcher which he can feed through to the itch (it also brings relief to a hard-to-reach itchy toe).
As if the broken leg isn’t enough, Jeff appears to be suffering with a virus, an infection of some sort which calls for the insurance nurse (nurse paid for by his newspaper’s insurance company), Stella, gloriously played by Thelma Ritter, to regularly check his temperature.
The rest of the scene, neighbourhood normality, and we see it thanks to the open windows of the apartments during the hot summer:
‘Miss Lonelyhearts’ (Judith Evelyn), nicknamed by Jeff who, clearly, has too much time on his hands. He is captivated by what he sees as the lives of his neighbours.

He's a man without a sense of space or home (recall the aforementioned unfurnished Malibu pad). Even the armored truck heist that is Heat's inciting incident takes place underneath the interchange of the 10 and 110 freeways—a space ignored by the thousands of commuters that travel right over it every single day.
On the other hand, the first we see of Hanna is in the most private of all domestic spaces. He's in bed with his wife, but the home he inhabits is a "dead-tech, post-modernistic, bullshit house" of steel railings and glass bricks. It's a post-modern architectural disaster somewhere in the Hills, seemingly inspired by the midcentury modern architects who would give 20th Century Los Angeles their character but without any of Richard Neutra or Pierre Koenig's sense of utopic order. His office, which Hanna would probably admit is more of a home to him, is also an unwelcoming place. Hanna would much rather be on the street where the action is instead of suffocating within a concrete tomb embedded within LAPD headquarters.
Even during Heat's much-celebrated bank heist and gun battle, Mann uses downtown's architecture for this effect. It's an odd comparison, but my mind often makes the connection to Jacques Tati's 1968 masterpiece PlayTime. An overhead shot of the bank lobby (Far East Bank at Two California Plaza) right before the mayhem breaks out, with the bank's towering windows and compartmentalized organization, recalls Monseiur Hulot's view as he's startled by the oppressive geometry of an office in a Parisian skyscraper.
To heighten this effect PlayTime, Tati constructed enormous, expensive sets and models to stand in as the offices and lobbies of Paris' towers, using matte gray as a color scheme for all the trimmings. (The film was a commercial failure and left Tati in debt.) Despite the order and efficiency imposed by the hyper-modern buildings of Tati's film, the spaces are cold and frigid. In PlayTime technology and the skyscrapers of a modern Paris have drawn people apart while they have incongruously made the city center more dense.
But despite this dim view of modernity, Tati's PlayTime offers a glimmer of optimism; one where we as individuals can break free from the constraints of modern space to celebrate a shared humanity we have with each other.

Behind and above her, the curved lines are repeated in a picture frame, and to screen right is the Tiffany lamp with its rounded shade glowing warm and alive. The walls behind her are likewise soft, brightly lit. Marion, especially with the light color of her dress, the curves in her hairstyle and her posture, adds to the sense that she is, or eventually will be, the victim.
Like the camera angles, the "picture" of Marion in the parlor, has little significance until it contrasted with the image of Norman who sits opposite her. Like Marion, details that surround Norman suggest his true nature. Unlike Marion, Norman is immersed in straight lines, many of which are set at angles that create a sense of conflict rather than curved line harmony. While the curves of the milk pitcher help to frame the foreground of Marion, Norman's arms rest on his legs while he nervously interlaces his fingers. To screen left and behind Norman's right shoulder stands a chest with straight heavy lines, a contrast to the curved shade of the Tiffany. On the walls hang small framed pictures, but these pictures have straight frames, and while Marion is bathed in light, Norman wears dark clothing and, because of the lighting, casts long shadows that strike the walls and ceiling sharply like black blades slicing through the air.
But perhaps the most unusual and the most curious feature of this parlor, and yet the most graphic clue to the twisted mind of Norman Bates, is the stuffed birds mounted on the walls and standing on the table and chest. "I like to stuff things," Norman says, his meaning all too obvious at the end of the film. Moreover, the birds present a rather frightening image in the parlor, as they hover around Norman like dark, sinister angels.
Throughout the film, snippets of the dual nature of humanity present themselves, and throughout the film, lighting, camera angle and mise-en-scene make their contributions to the total concept. Their presence in the movie is consistent and each shift is justifiable, yet nowhere in the film do these three elements come together with greater effect and with greater contrast than in Norman's parlor. The scene becomes like Hitchcock himself who hides in plain sight within his own films. Our fun is looking for what lies in front of us. Hitchcock's fun is hiding it from us.
Photo credits: MCA Home Video.

Lila is sitting at the center all the way in a lighted room in the back. The store itself is dark. She hears a car approaching stands up and runs through the dark store. We end up with a silhouette of her head in a close up. Without moving the camera, and with careful lighting, a simple scene becomes a memorable one. The movement is inside the frame as Lila breaks the depth of field of the shot. Previously Hitchcock created a close-up out of a medium shot, this time the task is difficult and much more impressive as he turns a deep focus shot into a close-up, without any cuts.
In a two-shot, the dark figures of Sam and Lila decide to see the deputy sheriff, Al Chambers. A transition leads to the deputy walking down the stairs. The camera slightly pans to the left and the camera is fixed on a four-shot (Sam, Lila, Mrs. Chambers, and Mr. Chamber). As Sam updates the sheriff with the story, we switch to a three-shot. Only this time they aren’t standing next to each other. The side of Al Chambers face is in the foreground and his wife, on the left, is in the background. When Sam mentions Norman’s mother the facial expression of Mrs. Chambers transforms to a look of panic and wonder. This shot is used to show the emotional reaction between the sheriff and his wife. After that we switch to a three-shot of Sam in the foreground, Lila in the middle-ground, and Mrs. Chambers in the background. Finally after constant switching from the two-shot to the three shot and gradually to one-shots, we end up with a low-angle shot of the sheriff and the spine-chilling line: “Well, if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates, who’s that woman buried out in Green Lawn Cemetery?” Hitchcock is involving the audience, moving us closer, building to more intimacy between the viewer and the characters. I like to call it the 4,3,2,1 scene.
The last line makes one question the existence of mother. Hitchcock is misguiding the audience. I bet a lot of the viewers were predicting a ghost story. The haunted mansion would fit that storyline, or maybe mother and Norman killed someone and made it look like mother died. The audience is in the dark.

Norman delicately walks up the stairway. He walks to mother’s room, and the camera slowly pans up closer to the door and eventually the long shot ends with an overhead view of Norman carrying his mother to the fruit cellar. This beautifully photographed shot meant to hide the face of Norman’s mother is an example of how Hitchcock uses cinematography to guide our eyes in whichever direction he pleases supporting the story.
Next, Sam and Lila decide to search every inch of the motel. To do so, they split up. Sam is to distract and keep Norman occupied while Lila goes up the mansion to get to the old woman. Two things happening at once builds the tension as the relation between both incidents eventually merge into the famous Norman in his wig scene.
Inside the office, Sam shoots accusations at Norman. He’s not as smooth as Arbogast which leads to trouble. They say an animal is most dangerous when cornered. The second time Norman is put in that situation, he breaks loose by striking Sam’s head with a souvenir. Meanwhile Lila after touring the house looks through a window and sees Norman running towards her from the Bates Motel. Space is all that was needed to keep us on the edge of our seats.
Moments later, Lila is hiding in the cellar room. She sees mother facing the wall in her rocking chair. A tap in the back later, the truth surfaces- mother is a corpse. Lila screams and hits a hanging light-bulb. Shadows dance. Enter Norman smiling like a creep with a kitchen knife high up in the air. More importantly the screeching noise makes another visit; the two previous times the audience listened to that horrible noise they witnessed murder scenes. Subconsciously the audience thinks it’ll happen again, only Sam comes to the rescue. The wig falls off Norman’s head.
The final scene is the famous psychiatry explanation. Like Roger Ebert, this scene always bothered me, for like the opening narration in “Dark City”, the full explanation underestimates the intelligence of the viewer. In his Great Movie essay, Roger provides a perfect cut: “If I were bold enough to reedit Hitchcock’s film, I would include only the doctor’s first explanation of Norman’s dual personality: ‘Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with.

Sunday, 16 March 2014
Rear Window (1954)
One of Hitch's greatest talents was in creating a world unique to his storytelling and visual style. In Rear Window these talents really are to the fore, using the teeming tenements of New York as his playground, embellishing it with great colour (both socially and cinematically) and detail.
An essay in big city loneliness and morbid curiosity, Rear Window has much to say about Hitch's gleeful reliance on voyeurism both of his audience at the cinema and of the outside world in general, tapping into how we perhaps live(d) via witty symbolism and analogy. I wonder if such a film, if made today, could grab an audiences attention and capture something of urban life now given that as a society we seem to be living a more insular and detached life, reliant on the screens of our laptops and PC's than the window to the streets outside.
A film about 'spectacle', Rear Window gives us just that and how, thanks to the great aforementioned symbolism and the equally subtle analogies that can be made between Stewart and Kelly's characters, or more specifically, their relationship, and those they are peeping on (as cited in Tania Modleski's excellent book 'The Women Who Knew Too Much'). It goes without saying that Stewart and Kelly are at the top of their game and they're ably provided with some comedic support from Thelma Ritter, adding some of Hitch's typically ghoulish delight to the proceedings.
All in all, this remains one of Hitchcock's finest.
- I hate that he killed the dog though :(

This is a packet for the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window.
The movie can be used as a refresher or review of standard plot and characterization of a story. It has discussion questions, character charts, and essay calgaryrefugeehealth.comeets can be modified to add or remove questions.
Rear Window screened at the Venice Film Festival and opened in the United States in August of Bosley Crowther, the legendary film critic for the New York Times, called it "tense" and "exciting," praising Hitchcock and Hayes for their "precision" in storytelling.
Below is a free excerpt of "Analytical Essay of Rear Window" from Anti Essays, your source for free research papers, essays, and term paper examples. Analytical Essay of Rear Window Rear Window is a classic movie, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, about human curiosity, voyeurism and murder.
The greatest in this experimental period was, of course, Rear Window. Here, Hitchcock concocted his most original, most challenging concept yet: to create an entire film from one vantage point, the rear window of a Greenwich Village apartment, and in turn, symbolize the very movie-watching.Download

So is Jeffries a reprehensible nosey body prying on unknowing neighbors or are the final actions of Jeffries voyeurism “almost entirely admirable” as critic Robin Wood writes in his landmark book, “Hitchcock’s Films.” He goes on to explain, “If he hadn’t spied on his neighbours, a murderer would have gone free, a woman would have committed suicide, and the hero would have remained in the spiritual deadlock he had reached at the beginning of the film.” Basically, I believe Wood is saying here, the ends justify the means. Wrong is right if the end results are morally acceptable. I am not sure I agree with that position. Jeffries is bored and he spies on others not for any “admirable” trait but out of a desperate attempt to escape from the tedium of being stuck in a wheelchair. Why not read some books, watch TV?
Though restricted to a wheelchair for the entire film, James Stewart still manages to give a gripping performance despite his confined position. His only time out of the wheelchair comes when Thorwald invades his apartment and tosses him out the window. We then get a long shot of him hanging on to the window sill before eventually falling to the ground below. Stewart’s character was supposedly based on legendary photojournalist Robert Capa. Grace Kelly is fine though her role is not especially demanding, but Hitchcock’s camera just drools all over her whenever she is on screen, and I can’t say I blame him. Thelma Ritter is acerbically charming as Stella who berates Jeffries for using binoculars and long lens as tools for spying in on his neighbors. Future TV defense attorney, Raymond Burr, still in the evil role stage of his career, manages to add a touch of compassion to his pathetic character.
“Rear Window” opened on August 1st, 1954 at the Rivoli Theater on Broadway in New York City (1). It was a gala benefit premiere for the American-Korean Foundation as noted in the newspaper ads (see above). Coincidently, one week later another film opened just a few blocks further down on Broadway with the similar theme of voyeurism at the less auspicious Globe Theater, Richard Quine’s “Pushover,” (2) which officially introduced future Hitchcock blonde, Kim Novak (3) to screen audiences.

Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960) a film about the story of Marion Crane, her adventure of how she disappears after stealing $40 000 and is then murdered by a mysterious figure at the Bates Hotel. As an investigation into her murder is opened, twists surprise the viewer until the climatic ending. Through the use of camera angles, film techniques, dialogue, and sound effects, the film portrays the main characters as they are being trapped, unable to escape their state of mind, the guilt of their actions.
Right at the start of the film, we get the impression of being trapped from the combination of music and graphics. Through the use of the sliding horizontal and vertical bars, it instantly reminds us of jail cells, being held captive of where we are. Throughout the whole movie, a lot of scenes will contain parallel lines, be it the blinds of the window, or even the railings around the stairs.
Hitchcock planned everything carefully to place these things in the shot. The small melody in the opening credits is used again in the scenes where Marion is in her car fleeing from somebody, as it creates suspense as though she is being chased.
In the opening scene, during the dialogue between Marion and the man of her affair Sam, we understand that the two of them are unable to cater for each other with their current lifestyles. During their conversation, we understand that Marion is tired of having to sneak out during her lunchbreaks to be with Sam, and at the same time, Sam is not financially stable enough to support his relationship with Marion. The two of them are stuck or "trapped" in Phoenix. They both long to escape to California and start a new life together.
Near the beginning of...

This year for the Grace Kelly Blogathon Day 2 I made the daunting decision to write up on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954)– which is arguably not only The Master’s best film, but also Grace’s best role.
But before I get into some of the technicalities, I will say that instead of giving a boring bloated analysis of it- Id like to focus on some of the stand out pieces that I feel make the picture brilliant
Grace plays Lisa Carol Fremont in this role- a model and independent woman. Her boyfriend is a photographer LB “Jeff” Jefferies (maybe that’s how they met!) played by Jimmy Stewart. Jeff breaks his leg and is holed up in his apartment with nothing to do but stare out and “spy” on his neighbors. Its all people watching until one night he suspects his neighbor Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) murders his wife. Jeff, Lisa, along with Jeff’s nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), then investigate the truth.
One element that I feel goes overlooked is the scene in which Lisa turns on the lights and introduces herself to the audience. Everyone focuses on her kiss entrance scene- but the scene that follows is just as brilliant.
Lisa goes over and turns on three lights- and with each light says a part of her name. But note the framing- the first light, Lisa- the camera is a close up; the second light, Carol- its a medium shot- and finally the third light, Fremont, the camera zooms out to a long shot in which we get to see her gorgeous black and white frock.
Its pieces like this in which I feel Hitchcock’s tiniest details of framing and dialogue go great with each other. And Grace- she’s the only actress who could make an entrance as simple as this super sophisticated and elegant.
Another element in this movie that I feel may be under rated is Hitchcock’s use of sound. Except for the opening credits, all sound in this film is diegetic sound. Its an interesting choice for Hitch, as usually his soundtrack scores are a key focus of his films. Take a look at the intro to the film (don’t worry no spoilers)
I’m not a fan of Jazz- but there is something so infectious about this piece of music that sets the scene for the film. You automatically thing New York, the 50s, glamour, but business of the city.

When the salesman, who we later learn is named Thornwall, starts behaving strangely and his bed-ridden wife is suddenly missing, Jefferies begins to suspect foul play, and snares his friends, including his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), a police detective (Wendell Corey), and his nurse (Thelma Ritter) into his web of suspicions. More and more clues appear, but are they real or the stuff of paranoia brought on by being cooped up in an apartment for a month-and-a-half?
The film’s set-up is perfect. We see Jefferies, we see what he sees, and we see his reaction to it. He’s trapped, as we are with him, unable to act and forced to watch events unfold. Here Hitchcock gives us the double-edged sword of voyeurism. Sure, you can look anonymously into countless other worlds, but you remain apart from them, unable to touch or directly effect them.
The further the film goes we begin to believe he may be right about Thornwall, but when his facts begin to be disproved one-by-one we wonder what the truth really is. And Hitchcock makes us wait, teasing us with clues and revealing the truth only at the last possible moment in a terrific climax (and perhaps even a better epilogue). Oh, how many current Hollywood writers and directors could learn a lesson here!!
Jimmy Stewart is perfectly cast as the man we want to believe with his own flaws and fears that may be coloring what he sees. And Grace Kelly, what can I say? If there’s ever been a more beautiful woman to grace movie screens (pun intended) I dare you to find her. Smart, sassy, playful, intelligent, and able to convey complex emotions in the slightest action or look. If the film has any flaw at all it’s that any man would think twice if such a woman wanted to marry him. On the DVD the film is loving restored into full color and clarity that will astound you. Rear Window is a perfect addition to any DVD library.

submarine: The Crimson Pirate)
Robert Siodmak: Visual Style
Architecture and Design:
- Victorian decor (heroine's apartment, Elisha Cook's apartment: Phantom Lady,
home: The Suspect,
mansion: The Spiral Staircase)
- Staircases (station: People on Sunday,
prison, asylum, outdoor stairs to elevated: Phantom Lady,
steps leading to throne: Cobra Woman,
home: The Suspect,
hotel, three staircases at mansion: The Spiral Staircase,
Swede's, entrance to room with shallow steps, mansion: The Killers,
nightclub with descending levels, sloping exit of armored car company, staircase at Lancaster's, Angel's Flight: Criss Cross,
shallow steps of hero's office building: The File on Thelma Jordon)
- Windows used for spaces in frame (window overlooking throne room: Cobra Woman,
diner window into kitchen: The Killers, police car window in last shot: Cry of the City,
window into van of truck: Criss Cross, window behind painting: The Crimson Pirate)
- Constructions (railing in Berlin: People on Sunday, boxing ring poles and ropes: The Killers,
hospital equipment at end: Criss Cross)
- Counters (lunch stand: People on Sunday, Anselmo's bar: Phantom Lady, diner: The Killers)
- Glass walled rooms (gas station: The Killers, hospital ward: Cry of the City)
- Sliding doors (diner window into kitchen: The Killers, slum apartment, elevator: Cry of the City,
sliding painting: The Crimson Pirate)
- Light flickering outside windows (lightning: The Spiral Staircase,
car lights from city streets: Cry of the City)
- Mirrors (mirror behind bar, Franchot Tone's dressing room: Phantom Lady,
large circular mirror in dressing area: Cobra Woman,
mansion staircase: The Spiral Staircase,
over diner window at start, tilted mirror in restaurant finale: The Killers,
hospital: Criss Cross)
- Concentric circles (car wheels at garage: People on Sunday,
snake container on round platform, throne seat, gong: Cobra Woman,
window and arch on stair landing: The Suspect,
shot down spiral staircase: The Spiral Staircase,
attorney's window: Cry of the City,

The shots were storyboarded to make sure there was enough contrast of sizes within the cuts. ....
“Here is the shot of the detective, a simple shot going up the stairs.
“He reaches the top stairs, the next cut is the camera as high as it can go, it was on the ceiling. …
“You see the figure run out, raised knife ...
"It comes down …
“Bang! – the biggest head you can put on the screen. ...
"But the big head has no impact unless the previous shot had been so far away. So don’t go putting a close-up where you don’t need it, because later on you will need it.”
Hitchcock’s description of that scene can be found in Conversations With The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute. The book is a collection of interviewers, and it didn’t escape Hitchcock’s interviewer that the above scene isn’t the only time that Psycho’s Milton Arbogast gets a close-up. In fact, Arbogast is introduced with one. Asked why, Hitchcock explained: “You bring him in like that because you are bringing in a new possible menace.”
That’s all Hitchcock says, and I had to review Psycho to be reminded of just how true that is. Let’s look at the scene in detail.
First, to fully appreciate the scene you have to remember what comes directly before it: Norman Bates, captured in a shadowy close-up, smiling as Marion Crane’s car disappears into the bog.
From there the film cuts to a seemingly safe image: Sam writing a letter to Marion. Except …
As the camera pulls back ...
Hitchcock prods the audience with visuals of threatening tools. Like these …
And these …
And these …
Eventually the camera pulls back to reveal a little old lady – a little old lady holding poison.
“They tell you what its ingredients are and how it’s guaranteed to exterminate every insect in the world. But they do not tell you whether or not it’s painless. And I say, insect or man, death should always be painless.” Classic sinister humor from Hitch.
From here, Lila Crane arrives. Notice that her arrival isn’t greeted with a close-up.
She meets with Sam.
As they begin to discuss Marion, they feel as if they are being watched. The little old lady is treated with suspicion as she passes by. She’s not a threat.

But I couldn't imagine any of you bein' so low that you'd kill a little helpless, friendly dog - the only thing in this whole neighborhood who liked anybody. Did ya kill him because he liked ya? Just because he liked ya?
As if to emphasize their complicity, Hitchcock gives us a shot of each neighbor. But is the dog owner's accusation fair? The Siren looks at Miss Lonelyhearts, tenderly placing the dog's body in his basket for the last time, and thinks not. The stricken faces around the courtyard don't suggest casual indifference. Maybe the characters don't trill "Good morning!" (though we do see some greeting going on) and inquire after everyone's health, but let's face it, that can be either heart-warming or annoying as hell. Many people move to big cities to get away from small-town nosiness. And we've been spending our time with Jeff and Lisa, who definitely care whether Mrs. Thorwald lived or died.
After the speech everyone moves away from the window, except Lisa and Jeff (and us, via Hitchcock's camera). But the most guilty person in the movie, the one who killed his wife, strangled a dog and doesn't go to look, is Thorwald. The shot of his apartment, dark save for the glow of his cigarette, is the Siren's favorite in Rear Window.
Could this movie have been about any city other than New York? Possibly, but it wouldn't have hit the same truths. Because New York is a city where neighbors ostentatiously stay out of each other's business when they're out on the sidewalk, then go home and do everything they can to find out what's happening across the air shaft. Sometimes, as with what the Siren's roommates later dubbed the "milkman incident," your discoveries are accidental. More frequently, you're looking on purpose. Either way, you gather information but usually don't need, or even want, to act on it. When the Siren encountered the milkman on the street a few weeks later, we did an excellent job of pretending It Never Happened.
isn't entirely true. But even if you take it for granted that Hitchcock was a control freak, what an actor does when the cameras turn is something that can never be completely controlled--for that you'd need a marionette.

The sound is comparable in both equally instances and actively signifies the irony which the starting point in the movie is also the end. Nevertheless , it is not the particular use of music that has a significant impact from the tone in the movie nevertheless also the silence. Hitchcock uses quiet incredibly well and only supplies dialogue as and when he must.
For example , even the confession picture at the denouement of the video is not as full of language as it may take other motion pictures. Words are being used sparingly and to make a point. Effects and cinematographic techniques are not used while sparingly because the conversation in an attempt to express the tension desired. Hitchcock undoubtedly used rear end projection in Vertigo: “Foreground and history tend to appearance starkly individual, partly as a result of absence of players shadows coming from foreground to background, partially because all background aircraft tend to seem to be equally diffuse.
(Bordwell & Thompson, 1996, l. 244). This really is an example of quite a few features and numerous instances of this in the film, such as the point when Novak and Stewart hug against the foundation of the ocean. The stars were shot and then enforced on a organic backdrop, therefore forgoing the use of shadow. As a result, there is something innately unnatural about it, which uses the storyline. The film stock is also colour which also helps to reduce the use of mild and darker, thus increases this particular result.
In conclusion, there may be little question that Hitchcock rejuvenated the horror genre with Schwindel and presented a master class in using cinematic techniques for impact. There are numerous approaches used inside the movie to aid contribute to the cyclical and to some extent claustrophobic atmosphere. Again, this kind of serves to intensify the tension. The sparing use of dialogue and excellent use of sound effects, when ever paired with the film share and smart camera aspects, certainly improve the narrative and ultimately allowed Hitchcock to produce one of the best motion picture examples of horror in history.
Bibliography Bordwell, David & Thompson, Kristin, mil novecentos e noventa e seis. Film Artwork: An Introduction. 5th Edition. New york city: McGraw-Hill. Orr, John, 2006. Hitchcock and Twentieth 100 years Cinema. Greater london: Wallflower Press.

by Nevin Hooper
Hello, once again fans of classic movies. It is now October- the month of horror movie, thriller, and other suspense films leading up to Halloween. So, since this month is full of movies of those genres, why not look over one of the best directors of all time, the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. For this series of reviews I will write four reviews of four of his movies in chronological order. I will start with Rear Window, followed by Vertigo (1958), then North by Northwest (1959), and finally The Birds (1963). So let’s start talking about one of my personal top five favorite films, Rear Window.
If you are not familiar with my grading system, it is simple. It goes from a 0/10 (movies that are so horrible that they should have never been made), to an 11/10 (movies that are so amazing, so fantastic, that you just can’t give the average 10/10 grade).
This Hitchcock masterpiece focuses on a man named L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart, in my personal favorite performance of his) who is a famous newspaper photographer. After breaking his leg in an accident, he is confined to a cast and wheelchair in his apartment. Since he has nothing else to do, he enjoys watching his neighbors outside of his window in his surrounding big apartment complex. One day he is certain that one of his neighbors has murdered someone, and with the help of his friend Lisa (Grace Kelly) and therapist Stella (Thelma Ritter), he goes against everybody’s judgment to figure out if the murder is just a hoax or a real threat.
This movie by far is the most suspensefully nerve wracking films I have ever seen in my entire life. I have never been so on the edge of my seat while watching this movie. The last thirty minutes in this film are probably Hitchcock’s most suspenseful scenes to date. The beauty of this film is you stay in one location throughout the entire runtime of the movie. The entire film never leaves the apartment, so you never see what is beyond it other than a few cars passing by in a little gap in between buildings. Since Jeffries is stuck with this limited view, he is entirely hopeless and the entire movie feels confined.
This is such a well done confined thriller. You are stuck in this one area.

This same idea of dual nature is expressed through the use of mirror doubles, another Hitchcock auteur icon (i.e. Claude Rains in Notorious, or Anthony Perkins in Psycho). The first mirror double in Vertigo comes as Madeline and Gavin Elster leave Ernie’s Restaurant for the first time. The double image hints that they’re both phonies.
It happens again as Scottie watches Madeline through a cracked door at the flower shop. Note that Scottie is quite literally witnessing her phony side.
It happens again the first time Scottie comes to Judy’s apartment. Scottie thinks he recognizes her. She convinces him otherwise. However, we the audience should know who’s telling the truth, based off Hitchcock’s mirror mise-en-scene.
The most poignant example happens just before Scottie figures out the truth. This mirror shot comes accompanied by dialogue clues like, “I have my face on” and “Can’t you see?”
Judy’s “face” line mirrors a quote by the archetypal femme fatale in Double Indemnity (1944), where Barbara Stanwyck looks into a mirror and says, “I hope I got my face on straight.”
For all this, some critics describe Vertigo as a sort of “film-noir in Technicolor.” Indeed, our hero goes on a night journey and winds up fooled by a femme fatale. There are multiple shots that scream noir, from the aforementioned shadows and mirrors, to Stewart’s silhouette entering the flower shop, to the Laura-like portrait of Carlotta.
Escaping the Fire
Isn’t that some insane mise-en-scene already? Wait, there’s more. Check out the use of the fireplace in Scottie’s apartment in the scene after Madeline jumps into the bay.
The scene starts with Scottie stoking the fire and pans around to Madeline. Moments later, an ominous over-the-shoulder shot (above) visually connects the danger of the fire to Madeline.
During their conversation, we never see Scottie in the same frame as the fire; but we often see Madeline with the flames in her background. To these eyes, it’s a clear symbol of the danger and temptation that Madeline represents.
Still have doubts? Check out the multiple scenes in the hallway outside Judy’s apartment where a “Fire Escape” sign appears prominently.

It’s easy enough to see why—if Jimmy Stewart calls his buddy Detective Doyle to say, “Hey, I think my neighbor killed his wife,” and then Doyle pops over and arrests Raymond Burr, the movie’s over in 5 minutes and everybody goes home. You need to drag things out a bit. (Rear Window also drags things out by digressing into the strained relationship between Stewart and Grace Kelly, and how their shared experience brings them together and enables him to finally make a commitment—23 Paces copies this idea in its own way, too. The Window substitutes the familiar strife between the boy and his weary parents but doesn’t need much of this because at 73 minutes it has less screen time to occupy).
I mention this fairly obvious point because there’s one last Rear Window-alike I want to cover and it takes the bold step of defying this narrative logic. The film is Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Some obvious Hitchcockian bona fides we can note upfront include the fact that Argento was often called “the Italian Hitchcock,” and he cultivated this comparison happily. Also, Bird features an (uncredited) appearance by Reggie Nalder, previously seen in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, here playing a sinister baddie once again.
And the setup starts off in familiar Rear Window territory—a depressed and alienated creative person in an environment where he is predisposed to be especially attentive. The specific iteration of this in this instance is: frustrated American novelist in Italy fighting off writer’s block. And he winds up witnessing a crime:
Well right away we can see something’s different. Not only is this stunningly realized and visually aggressive cinema, but unlike the other films we’ve been talking about there’s no doubt whatsoever that a crime has taken place. In fact, far from having to convince the police to take this seriously, our hero (Tony Musante) will be quickly seconded by the cops as an unwilling surrogate investigator. He doesn’t pursue this case because he wants to—he does it because he has to.
And so the film actually becomes a runaround, a shaggy dog story as a bunch of stuff happens that doesn’t really move the plot forward, until our hero starts to remember the details more clearly and coheres a picture of what he really witnessed.
So why do I persist in seeing it as Rear Window descendant?

The use of black and white film is very effective in this scene- as it reflects the mood of the scene and allows the dark silhouette to appear sinister and evil against the white shower curtain; the darkness also creates a strong connotation in relation to death and darkness.
When the mysterious figure draws back the shower curtain the shots are short and are no longer than a few seconds; Hitchcock has done this purposely to show how brutal the stabbings are. Each shot would shock the audience. A 1960’s audience would differ dramatically from a modern day audience; the audience of Psycho in the 1960’s would have perhaps not seen film so vicious and brutal. The diegetic sound heightens the tension amongst the audience, the music is loud and abrupt, which shocks the audience. The diegetic sounds of knife stabbings are also apparent, as Hitchcock has made the murder so brutal that it is not just one stab; it is the repetitive stabbing of This sound also puts the audience on edge- because it is not a pleasant sound to the ears; It was Hitchcock’s intention as it makes the audience aware of how unpleasant the murder is. Marion until the camera slowly pans to a shot of the bath which then follows the flowing water stained with blood streaming towards the plug hole; this shocks the audience because it indicates just how brutal the murder was. Marion is a classic victim as she lacks survival skills and an ability to defend herself, she is also passive- therefore she was an easy target to Norman Bates.
After the stabbing, the camera cuts to a shot of Marion’s hand- the bent fingers highlight Marion’s desperation to hold on, but she is slipping away.
After the shot of Marion’s hand Hitchcock uses a camera shot of Marion sliding against the wall with the her up trying to grab the shower curtain; the use of this type of shot connotes death and desperation. This shot signifies how Marion is trying to grasp on to life, but not succeeding.
When Marion is dead on the floor, Hitchcock has used a close up of her face and eye that looks straight into the camera and at the audience. This allows the audience to relate to her, and see that she died in pain. Marion also looks like she has a tear in the corner of her eye, which shows her fear. The camera slowly pans away to the newspaper, and the audience are then shown that the mystery is being continued.

But we see the effect it’s having on Mrs. Verloc, as she eyes the knife she’s using to cut the roast.
Mr. Verloc sees her eyeing it and knows what it means. He approaches her and she grabs the knife to keep it from him, stabbing him in the struggle. Now we have a new kind of tension. Mrs. Verloc will have to be arrested for murder.
Our undercover detective arrives first, and reveals the feelings he has for Mrs. Verloc before discovering the body. He knows what it means, and Mrs. Verloc urges him to take her to the police station, but on the way, he suggests they flee, telling her that there are 12 hours before anyone will find the body. Hitchcock sets another timer. This one immediately expires with two scenes. One in which the pet shop owner’s wife demands he go to Verloc’s theater and get the bird cage to avoid having the bomb connected to them, and another where the police decide to go to the theater and arrest Verloc that evening.
Here Hitchcock lets the audience get a little bit ahead of the characters again and creates a new kind of tension. If the pet shop owner gets to the theater first and the police find him there, he will easily be blamed for the murder and Mrs. Verloc will be free.
Here’s a part of the film that’s really confusing. The police decide that Verloc might have another bomb. They start telling everyone that there’s a bomb. The pet shop owner discovers the dead body, and rather than being caught with it, he decides to blow up the entire building with another bomb he had on him. Why did he have another bomb on him? I have no idea. But it ties up the plot nicely, with the police’s suspicions confirmed.
The film ends with the chief inspector trying to piece it all together, and deciding that Mrs. Verloc must have had nothing to do with it. Here we get another common Hitchcock moment, where a character is either freed or condemend through coincidence or misunderstanding. Hitchcock clearly exists in a chaotic world.
This is a really well-done film. It’s pretty straightforward, but has enough twists and interesting characters to keep things entertaining. Hitchcock does a great job of ratcheting up the tension. the layering of various tensions over and over is especially well done.

The scene begins with what appears to be an innocent invitation from Norman to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), the unsuspecting guest at the Bates Motel, to come into "the parlor." The use of the word parlor--as in "'come into my parlor' said the spider to the fly"--establishes the tenor of the scene. The significance of this brief line becomes all the more apparent at the end of the film when Norman's "mother", who has by now consumed Norman's mind and soul, looks directly into the camera and says that "she" would not "even hurt a fly."
Norman brings Marion her dinner and invites her into his parlor. Notice Norman's reflection in the window.
In the parlor itself, Hitchcock begins his work. The room is small, barely big enough for the two chairs, the lamp table, coffee table, and chest that occupy it. On the lamp table is a Tiffany lamp, the only source of light in the room and thus the key light within the scene. The characters' positions within the room and how they are lit by this single source keys the audience to the characterizations.
Marion, for instance, sits near and slightly behind the lamp. Her face is well lit, and she, like the lamp, appears to radiate a glowing warmth. Despite the fact that she has embezzled forty thousand dollars from her employer, she is not hidden in shadows of evil or consumed by the darker side of her nature. Leaving Marion in light indicates that redemption and atonement is possible. Indeed, at the conclusion of the scene, Marion has done an about face. While Norman does not know the details of her flight, the audience knows she intends to return the stolen money. Marion is also pooled in fill and high key lighting that creates a softness around her and suggests she is redeemable.
Marion is surrounded by soft lighting. Note the round picture frame on the wall behind her.
Norman is harshly lit in a corner of the room. Note the angular picture frames behind him.
On the other hand, Hitchcock positions Norman far from the light source and slightly to one side. The effect is a harsh line--light and shadow--across Norman's face, re-emphasizing the clash of his dual personality (host/murderer, man/child, mother/son). Norman is also immersed in low key lighting.

In Phantom Lady it is Elisha Cook
doing his drum solo; in Criss Cross Siodmak frequently
cuts to the Rumba players, with a focus on the percussionist.
The theater scenes at the start recall the silent-film show that
begins The Spiral Staircase. Both pay as close attention
to the audience, as they do anything shown on stage. The courtroom
scenes focus entirely on the audience in the courtroom, in an
unusual figure of style.
Working women are everywhere in this film: the heroine, the psychiatrist,
the milliner and her designer, the delicatessen owner, the actress.
We repeatedly see women running businesses, and working as skilled
professionals. This might reflect the influence of Joan Harrison,
the Alfred Hitchcock protégé who was one of Hollywood's
few women producers. It also reflects the fact that women took
over many jobs during World War II.
By contrast, three sinister
organizations, the police, the cab drivers and the musicians,
are all-male. They contrast with the far more open and constructive
The heroine is repeatedly shown using the phone. Both the telephone
and the Dictaphone seem to be her high tech tools, used for both
business and crime detection. They often link her to unresponsive
men, however: her boss, the police. The heroine of The Spiral
Staircase also has trouble using the phone.
Both the heroine's apartment, and Elisha Cook's, are full of the
heavy Victorian design and bric-a-brac that will later dominate
The Spiral Staircase. The city streets, and even the elevated
station, are also full of an oppressive sense of past architecture
looming over the lives of the characters. However, when we finally
do get into a modernist design world, in the killer's apartment
at the end, there is no sense of relief.
The hero is a civil engineer, who has a vision of building better cities for people,
full of light and air. This change of environment would liberate people
from their oppressive architectural surroundings. It recalls the
Bauhaus of the 1920's, back in Siodmak's native Germany.
The scene where the cabby has his cab up on a hoist for maintenance,
anticipates the dispatcher's office in Criss Cross.

Mulvey describes Hitchcock in relation to “the investigative side of voyeurism” (14); Jason, in lecture, explained this as the way in which Hitchcock complicates the straightforward and unquestioned voyeurism that is featured in other Golden Era Hollywood films. This struck a chord for me, as watching Vertigo there were several instances where I found myself feeling uncomfortable and guilty, even, at the very apparent voyeurism in the film. This functions on the level of the plot: Scottie, while at first tasked with observing Madeleine, goes on to become obsessed with her; observing her from afar becomes his guilty pleasure, and the spectator who is given Scottie’s point of view takes a part in this. The same effect is produced through the film language in Vertigo. Rather than simply watching Madeleine, we watch her for so long and in such an obtrusive manner that we cannot help but become self-aware of the fact that we are watching her. A concrete example is the short clip shown in lecture when Scottie first sees Madeleine in the restaurant. As she is leaving, she passes Scottie sitting by the bar and the spectator is shown a close-up of her side profile, which is held for quite a long time. In my experience, we rarely see a person (in a film or real life) from so close-up and for such a long time unless we are engaged in dialogue with them; the shot therefore has the effect that the spectator is expecting or even yearning Madeleine to turn and make eye contact with the camera, while at the same time dreading this outcome because we understand that she is not meant to see Scottie. What results is that the voyeuristic pleasure becomes entwined with a sense of guilt.
Straightforward voyeurism, what Mulvey would describe as fetishistic scopophilia, is grounded in the fact that the person being watched is unawares of the fact. Within films, this functions in such a way that a spectator, by watching the film, is given ‘permission’ in their role as a voyeur. They are able to take part in the pleasure of looking in innocence and without the fear of repercussion. Yet Hitchcock does not allow his spectator to remove themselves from the responsibility of their voyeurism, in a manner that Mulvey attributes to directors like Sternberg. This works on several levels.

Have you ever imagined what the courtyard of the apartments from Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rear Window" looked like in full? Videographer and special effects master Jess Desom has done just that. Using After Effects, Desom pieced together the scenes from the famous Greenwhich Village courtyard and all of the tenants' happenings into a cohesive three minute video. The results of his work are phenomenal and kind of mind blowing, providing never-before-seen perspective on a popular film.
Watch below for Jess Desom's version of "Rear Window":

Knowing that the body is in the trunk from the beginning of the film is a simple but powerful way to create moments high tension, it makes it hard to keep your eyes off of the trunk.
"Constructed entirely from uncut ten-minute takes, shot on a beautifully-constructed set, it's certainly a virtuoso piece of technique, but the lack of cutting inevitably slows things down, entailing the camera swooping from one character to another during dialogues." (Andrew, G 2006) Because the camera can only shoot for 10 minutes at a time it becomes routine for the screen to have moments of darkness from disappearing behind the backs of the actors, which made the cuts obvious but still kept the flow of the film. Therefore the cuts don't make it entirely seamless editing, even other critics have commented: "...the camera trick of concluding every reel by focusing on some dark jacket or other transition surface becomes predictable..." (Lenin Imports, 2004) In consideration to Hitchcock's limitations of the 10 minute film this seems like the only way this film style could be pulled off without obvious jerky cuts.
For this film to work there must have been a lot of planning from the beginning, from the layout of the set as it was being built to the strain on the actors to remember there lines for long periods of time (no time for mistakes with colour film in the 1940's = $.)
|Hitchcock and Joan Chandler, possibly arguing but Joan Chandler doesn't seem impressed.|
"Every movement of the camera and the actors was worked out first in sessions with a big blackboard, like football skull practice. Even the floor was marked and plotted with numbered circles for the 25 to 30 camera moves in each 10 minute reel. Whole walls of the apartment had to slide away to allow the camera to follow the actors through narrow doors, then swing back noiselessly to show a solid room. Even the furniture was "wild." Tables and chairs had to be pulled away by prop men, then set in place again by the time the camera returned to its original position, since the camera was on a special crane, not on tracks, and designed to roll through everything like a juggernaut."(Lenin Imports, 2004) Knowing that all this went on behind the scenes it is not so hard to spot if anything went wrong, from time the trunk had changed positions and the furniture in the kitchen had moved.

First, the use of a thin window frame profile helps to minimize the physical barrier between the inside and the outside. But the next element that starts to make the mind wonder is how the roof is held up, as we know the thin window frames will hardly have the strength to hold up the concrete roof.
So by playing with different materials and structural elements, we are able to generate illusions that add a bit of spice to create a unique corner for the home.
In this example here, the effect is again translated through the corner glass sliding door and the feature wall at the end. By having the opening at the corner, it helps to highlight the floating ceiling, but the effect is amplified further through the wall at the end, which stops short of the ceiling, thereby teasing the user further with this “floating” effect.
You can see then that through these architectural design techniques, we are able to create uniqueness to the space that will leave an impression… and such is the power of Architecture.

This attribution of symbolic power to inanimate objects is another hallmark of Hitchcock: a bread knife (Blackmail), a key (Notorious). He also places great focus on the creation of set pieces where he is able to exercise his talent for detail and suspense.
Hitchcock's vision of the world is reflected in the themes that predominate in his films. The specific psychology that is presented in the films, such as the fascination with wrongful accusation and imprisonment, is a significant part of the Hitchcock signature. One of the basic themes is that of: the mistaken identity, the wrong man accused who must find the real perpetrator in order to prove his innocence (The Lodger, The Thirty-Nine Steps, North By Northwest, etc.). Hitchcock also found visual expression for his themes in recurrent motifs that express his vision of the world: staircases (Strangers On A Train, Vertigo, Psycho), sinister houses (Psycho), chasms (Vertigo, North by Northwest) and National Landmarks (most obviously in North by Northwest which includes the United Nations' Building and Mount Rushmore).
Notorious includes prime examples of trademark Hitchcock themes: a woman complicitous in her forced transformation to a different person, later brought to its fruition in Vertigo; the figure of the mother both adoring and deadly, who appears in various forms in Strangers on a Train, Psycho (1960), and Marnie and the MacGuffin, the narrative device Hitchcock once defined as the thing that motivates the actions of the characters but which is of minor interest to audiences. The MacGuffin in the case of Notorious being uranium ore hidden in wine bottles in Sebastian's basement.
Donald Spoto notes that the Hitchcock touch was evident even in his earliest films: `in the structure and content of the screenplay . . .in the development of plot and theme and images; in the selection of cast and setting; in the style of lighting and placement and movement of the camera; in the moods created, sustained, and shifted; in the subtle manipulation of an audience's fears and desires; in the economy and wit of the narrative; in the pacing; and in the rhythms of the film's final cutting". Hitchcock was, therefore, able to transcend the artistic constraints of the Studio System in which most films are recognisable as the work of a particular studio than of an individual director and make highly personalised films that bear the stamp of his artistic personality.

Instead, we understand her troubles and feel for her. In other words, she has a reason for stealing the money. Another example of Hitchcock trying to justify her theft is evident in the next scene. We meet Mr. Cassidy, a man who sprays his money everywhere to “buy happiness”. We don’t regard Marion as a villain because the man she steals from is portrayed as a very rich disgusting beast who doesn’t know how to hold his tongue. He speaks his mind with no manners whatsoever flirting with Marion and embarrassing the boss (“where’s that bottle you said was in your desk?”). After the theft, no real harm is done, at least not enough to make Marion a villain. We simply see her dark side. Again, this is expressed visually when we see her staring at the open envelope wearing her black bra. The $40,000 in the envelope serves as the ‘MacGuffin’ of the film. The term ‘MacGuffin’ refers to an object that bares much importance to the characters but to the audience it’s only a vehicle to drive the plot to the next level. A ‘MacGuffin’ is dropped once it serves its purpose.
Between the first justification scene and the second one, there’s the famous shot of Hitchcock’s trademark cameo. He stands outside a sidewalk, when the camera leaves the frame following the entrance of our main character. This is simply a visual signature. Hitchcock was well known at the time, not just by the name stamped on the previous “North by Northwest” posters but by introducing the episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” on television. The same crew that worked for the TV series worked with him to deliver his small budget project to the big screen. Anyway, his appearance is a visual signature and a reminder that things will turn ugly. It’s Hitchcock.
“Psycho” revolutionized cinema, both technically and in terms of content. A perfect film to study various uses of editing, the rhythm in “Psycho” can be observed in how Hitchcock handles the passage of time very efficiently. When Marion leaves the room, we realize that it’s still that same day. She goes to work, collects some money she’s supposed to put into the bank and goes back home. All that happens in one particular afternoon, and the time frame doesn’t change.

Whenever I would hear about Alfred Hitchcock, I would always listen to people say what a geniuses he was. That his style of filmmaking was different from anyone else, I really had no clue what they were talking about. I used to watch his half hour TV. shows on Nick at Nite when I was a kid, and I don't even remember them so well. When we watched Vertigo in class I got my first real taste of this director's work. I t was a really good movie. It defiantly held my interest. But class was just starting, and other then it just being a good story, I didn't appreciate what made him such an innovative director.
Psycho was the first movie I watched on my own, looking for certain areas of the film to make it stand out from other movie's I have seen before. My sister and I rented it, bought some candy and popped it in the DVD player.
I already knew the basic story. A guy has a motel, and a woman gets killed in a shower, if I was not in this film class that is what I would have seen. Since I have been learning what to look for in a movie I saw so much more, and can better understand why so many people say Hitchcock was so ahead of his time.
Tension is what I felt from the movie, from the second it started. The music makes me feel this way. It gives me the feeling of fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. Also in the opening credits all you so is straight stark horizontal lines going in and out. In the opening scene it is one of romance, and yet very drastic colors. Nothing is soft or rounded. The background is...

This is no doubt the source of Tom Shone’s “lopsided angles” complaint above. Why would Hitchcock constantly show this? There must be a reason, I kept telling myself. Now, after countless viewings, allow me to quote old Barton Keyes in Double Indemnity, “I think papa has it all figured it out.”
I believe the ceiling shots are Hitch’s way of saying we don’t know what lies above, a crucial theme if you consider what happens beyond the roof of the bell tower.
Suddenly the ceiling shot at the McKittrick Hotel makes sense. It explains any plot confusion when Madeline “mysteriously” disappears, because there’s no telling what’s going on above. For all we know, Madeline could have escaped out a back window.
Another odd ceiling shot appears during Scottie’s trial — the perfect time for Hitch to call attention to the idea that something else is going on in the case.
Circling Camera and Cinematic Bliss
Above all this, to me, the greatest moment of the entire film unfolds in the magical neon green light of Judy’s hotel room. In my personal favorite moment in all of cinema, Scottie sees Judy emerge from the bathroom, bathed in neon green light in all her Madeline glory. In separation (cutting back and forth between separate images), we see a dream-like Judy slowly approach an awe-struck Scottie. Finally, the couple break the separation by embracing in a “two shot” that becomes a 360-degree dolly in single take. Such a circling camera is another Hitchcock auteur icon, used to signal a turning point in a relationship (i.e. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman at the end of Notorious).
Here in Vertigo, the turning point is Scottie’s realization of Judy’s true identity. While it takes the necklace in the following scene to seal the deal, the look on Scottie’s face here is unmistakable, even to first-time viewers. What first-timers might not see is the transforming background. As the camera circles the characters, Judy’s apartment literally transforms into the horse stable at the Spanish mission where they kissed just before Madeline’s death. The moment is accompanied by the exact same music cue that played during the stable kiss.
I remember seeing this scene — the so-called Scene d’Amour — projected on the big screen for the first time.

When he finishes, the camera focuses on the water going down the drain. As it becomes clearer, we see the sink is filled with gritty sand. He then goes and lies down in bed, covering his face with a newspaper.
With just a minute of film, Hitchcock has told us: 1) this guy is the saboteur, 2) he lives at the movie theater, 3) he really doesn’t want anyone to know he was out that night.
This is what Hitchcock was great at. If he had kept the identity of the saboteur a secret, then we’re just waiting around for him to strike again, and watching the police or agents gather clues and try to learn as much as we can, and maybe trying to guess on our own who the saboteur is. By telling us immediately who the saboteur is, Hitchcock now creates a tension around this character and everyone he interacts with. Will he be caught? Did he leave behind a clue? Do the people around him know what he has done? What will he do next? By slowly playing out these answers as the film goes on, Hitchcock flips the movie from a mystery to a thriller.
As the film proceeds, we learn that the ticket clerk Mrs. Verloc is the husband of Mr. Verloc, the saboteur, who owns the movie theater, and she has a younger brother named Stevie. We also learn early on that Mr. Verloc is being watched by a Scotland Yard detective who is posing as a grocer at the store next door.
The film plays as a by the numbers thriller, expertly crafted. Verloc goes to receive his payment, only to be told that the power outage wasn’t good enough, that the city found it amusing, rather than terrifying. He is pressed to increase the terror, by setting off a bomb. We see Verloc here is hesitant, not wanting to hurt anyone. Hitchcock is trying to humanize his villain here, and it’s a good attempt, but I don’t know if I ever felt like Verloc was a decent guy caught up in circumstance.
As the inspector tries to get information out of Mrs. Verloc and Stevie, Mr. Verloc is directed to a pet shop that also makes “fireworks”(it’s a bomb for anyone not good with metaphor).

Vertigo can be described as 1958 film directed simply by Alfred Hitchcock that has was standing the test of time inside the horror genre. It is considered to be one of the seminal films inside the genre not simply because it set the develop for the films to follow along with but also because it showed numerous features and approaches that would in order to revolutionise the way in which movies were created. The camera angles, utilization of space, cinematography, special effects and sound all contribute to the general effect achieved.
As a result, this essay will analyze each of the over with a view to concluding that Hitchcock recharged the apprehension genre with Vertigo and provided a master class in employing cinematic techniques for effect. The first technique of notice is the way in which camera aspects are used in order to create a great atmosphere of fear, offering the impression that the characters are moving in one bad circle. The camera “¦ simulates panicky feelings of acrophobia (fear of heights) felt by Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart).
(Pramaggiore & Wallis, 2005, p. 127). For example , by one point in the film, a set of stairs is shot from the top. This not only refers to the cyclical nature with the narrative since the bell tower staircase is indeed circular but likewise narrows the shot. The illusion of falling from a great elevation is fostered in this taken and indeed in others, that way in which Stewart appears to be sitting on the corner. Furthermore, the camera sides also website link directly to the illusion of space: “¦
serves as a template pertaining to key designs: the topography of a metropolis and its adjacent countryside matched by dilemmas of intimate choice, remorse and obsession. (Orr, 2005, l. 137). The view from the belfry, campanile always appears to be bleak, therefore mirroring the overtones from the plot. The sound used as well highlights the cyclical nature of the narrative. In an interview in Sight and Sound, Scorsese pointed out that “¦ the music is usually built about spirals and circles, fulfilment and hopelessness.
Herrmann seriously understood what Hitchcock was going for ” he planned to penetrate to the heart of obsession. (2004). Scorsese’s assessment is proper and this is typified by the scenes by which Madeline and Judy fall season to their fatalities.

- Rated PG
- Buy the DVD
Reviewed by Bob Westal
f the millions of people who saw last year’s featherweight Shia LaBeouf suspense hit “Disturbia,” only a small number will ever realize that what they were viewing was essentially a remake -- a fact which producer Steven Spielberg may eventually end up hearing about in court. Still, film fans should go straight to the source. Director D.J. Caruso’s teen trifle was a Big Mac – and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” is an adult-style full course steak dinner from the best restaurant you’ve ever been to.
Simultaneously a devilish entertainment and a big-hearted work of art, my personal all-time favorite film from one of the three or four best directors of all time is as funny as it is suspenseful to the point of being terrifying -- while also managing to be sexy, romantic, and poignant. Both cinematically innovative and perfectly stylish, and with a witty and well-rounded script by John Michael Hayes, this masterpiece of mass entertainment is an abject lesson to makers of modern mainstream thrillers who act as if audiences are capable of precisely two emotions per film
“Rear Window” stars James Stewart as L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, an adrenaline junkie of a globetrotting photojournalist laid up in his Manhattan apartment with a broken leg. It’s 1955 and television is still a questionable new gadget that a busy guy like Jefferies wouldn’t bother with (and film studios would rather not advertise). Shia LaBouef’s beloved video games and Internet haven’t even been thought of, and household air conditioning is about as common as 65-inch plasmas are today. And there is one of New York’s nasty, muggy heat waves to contend with. The heat turns out to be an extremely dangerous saving grace, because almost everyone in Jefferies’ apartment complex is keeping their windows wide open and providing what amounts to primitive reality television for the frustrated Jefferies. His entertainment choices include: sexy light comedy provided by the lithesome and often under-clad “Miss Torso” (Georgine Darcy); melodramatic pathos from the troubled “Miss Lonelyheart” (Judith Evelyn); and, the closest mid-‘50s equivalent to “Real Sex” -- a mostly unseen honeymoon couple.

About this Piece
Tiomkin and Hitchcock worked together a final time in the 1954 thriller, Dial M for Murder, which, like Rear Window, was an experiment in confined space: set mostly in the London apartment of an unhappily married couple (Grace Kelly and Ray Milland), it was also Hitchcock’s only film shot in the then-trendy format of 3-D. Rather than drown the movie in gimmicky effects, the director utilized the format more subtly, emphasizing the depth and dimensions of its location: a seemingly cozy flat which, if Milland’s scheming husband has his way, will prove an ideal site for the murder of Kelly.
Characteristically, Tiomkin often infuses this intimate chamber piece with the clamorous force of grand opera (in fact, his main suspense theme contains more than an echo of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov). But its penchant for melodrama recedes, whenever Tiomkin scores the illicit romance between Margot Wendice (Kelly) and her lover, Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings).
Steven C. Smith is the author of A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (University of California Press, 1991), and a recipient of the Deems Taylor Award for writing on music. He is currently a writer/producer on the A&E television series Biography.

For one, the fact that Scottie is in and of himself a voyeur in the film casts attention to the illicit nature of the act. As the film progresses, shots such as the one in the restaurant described above constantly remind a spectator of the fact that they are practicing voyeurism; Hitchcock does not allow the spectator to commit the act subconsciously or innocently. These constant reminders achieved through the film language also have the effect that the reader becomes implicit in Madeleine’s fate at the hands of Scottie. Jason also showed examples of when Madeleine breaks the fourth wall to look into the camera. Her expression as she does this is despairing and imploring, as if she is asking the spectator to help her, to save her from the fate that Scottie -and the spectator with him – is creating. These shots stand incongruous to the element of straightforward voyeurism whereby the person being watched is unaware; once again, the spectator is reminded that they are committing voyeurism, and being forced to take on responsibility.

Note Hitchcock opens the film by panning through a large city (Phoenix Arizona), the choice is random, so is the date (Friday, December the Eleventh), as well as the time (Two Forty-Three P.M.) The camera then moves through a random window of one of the many buildings. Hitchcock strikes the first note on his piano. Through these random choices, Hitchcock subliminally tells the audience that this tale can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
We get our first glimpse of the main character. Or is he? She’s a blond, which is a Hitchcock trademark, so she must be – at that moment so it seems. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is wearing a white bra and cuddles with her secret lover. Hitchcock picked that white bra at the beginning to signify her innocence. Later on, after she steals the money, we see Marion in a black bra, signifying her darker side. At one point, her boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin) suddenly releases the arms so passionately holding on to the love of his life. This is the exchange of words that follows:
Sam: “I’m tired of sweating for people who aren’t there. I sweat to pay off my father’s debts, and he’s in his grave. I sweat to pay my ex-wife alimony, and she’s living on the other side of the world somewhere.”
Marion: “I pay, too. They also pay who meet in hotel rooms.”
Sam: “A couple of years and my debts will be paid off. If she remarries, the alimony stops.”
Marion: “I haven’t even been married once yet.”
Sam: “Yah, but when you do, you’ll swing.”
Marion: “Oh, Sam, let’s get married.”
Sam: “Yeah. And live with me in a storeroom behind a hardware store in Fairvale? We’ll have lots of laughs. I’ll tell you what. When I send my ex-wife her alimony, you can lick the stamps.”
Marion: “I’ll lick the stamps”
Through this dialogue we learn that they can’t get married for financial reason, but what Hitchcock is doing on a deeper level is somewhat justifying the heroine’s future actions. That way we don’t despise Marion for committing theft.

It stars Bobby Driscoll, a child actor on loan from Disney, halfway between starring in Song of the South and Treasure Island, as the proverbial boy who cried wolf. One sweltering night, right after getting lectured by his exasperated parents (Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale) for telling tall tales, he tries to escape the summer heat by sleeping on the fire escape–where he just happens to spy his neighbors murdering a man!
As you might expect, his history of fabulism renders his eyewitness testimony suspect–and the poor kid can’t get anybody to take him seriously. That is, anybody but the next-door killers, who learn of his accusations and decide to take them very seriously indeed.
As the frame grabs above should indicate, part of the joy of this deliciously tight thriller is its visual panache–it was directed by Ted Tetzlaff, who had a reasonably impressive list of credits to his name as a director but was bext known as a cinematographer–among his credits as director of photography was Hitchcock’s Notorious.
One of Tetzlaff’s contributions was the single-minded commitment to presenting the film from a child’s perspective. This is worth noting, because not all movies about children are told from their viewpoint. In fact, I’d say most movie in which child protagonists are endangered are actually told from an adult point of view, with a child hero. But The Window is like Invaders From Mars (itself the work of a cinematographer-cum-director) in orienting the tale to the boy’s perspective–both narratively and visually.
In this case, any parallels we find with Rear Window can’t be explained as an attempt to mimic the success of a hit movie—The Window came out 5 years before Rear Window and therefore can’t be a knock-off. And we can’t say Rear Window took any inspiration from The Window, because it was a micro-budgeted supporting feature that few people even saw.
That being said, the parallels are genuine links—you see, both movies were adapted from Cornell Woolrich stories. As it happens, they were adapted from different Cornell Woolrich stories: The Window is derived from The Boy Cried Murder and Rear Window is derived from It Had to be Murder. It’s just that Woolrich apparently plagiarized himself from time to time and ended up writing two separate short stories so incredibly similar in concept and content that the movie versions of those two stories naturally seem like remakes of each other.

Here it is:
It starts, as many shots do, with a very quick dissolve:
This reveals Mabuse leaning over the countess - they hold this pose for about 5 seconds:
Then the countess makes a break for it, and Mabuse grabs her:
They struggle - and come to a halt, and hold this position (a very tense, violent pose, actually, Mabuse basically pinning her there) for a few second:
...before she makes another break...
... which leads to the cut - to a blank door, and the countess bursting into the frame:
It's a powerful effect - the alternation of long and short shots, of slow, deliberate movements and gestures and quick, violent movements; integrated with the variations in shot scales - long shots and closer shots alternating, shots of big spaces and tight spaces; even the varying transitions - short dissolves, longer dissolves between shots, alternating with abrupt cuts; and the variations on how the cuts come - cuts to empty spaces that people jump into, say... Everything aimed at generating tension, and doing it...

By privileging the view of the male characters, by placing the narrative action in their hands while the female characters remain passive objects of this male point of view, women in cinema become reduced to their visual allure and what scopophilic satisfaction they offer. ‘By means of identification with him’, Mulvey says of the male character, ‘through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too’ (1975, 13). In placing the locus of control – both the power of looking and the power of agency – on the male characters and inviting the audience to participate in the exercising of such control, film ideologically supports and maintains an oppressive status quo in the real world.
The Male Gaze in Classical Hollywood: An Example from Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954).
Mulvey provides several examples from classical Hollywood in ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Of these, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), Marnie (1964), and Rear Window are referenced as pieces of cinema that not only hold the concealed filmic language of the male gaze, but in which ‘the look is central to the plot’ (1975,15). Mulvey supports Douchet’s interpretation of Rear Window as ‘a metaphor for the cinema’ (Mulvey, 15). In examining the opening sequence to Rear Window, the complexity of the gaze can be observed:
Although at first, Jeff (James Stewart) has his back turned to the window, the preceding sequence invites the audience to watch the events unfolding from his window, positioning the viewers to voyeuristically engage with Jeff’s surroundings even when he is not. This immediately establishes the gaze of the audience both as an independent voyeur and an occupant of Jeff’s space, creating a sense of identification with the male protagonist. Once Jeff is on the phone, he gazes out the window, returning to the same voyeuristic vantage point at the beginning of the scene. In both the gaze of the audience and Jeff’s, the woman across the way, scantily-clad in the privacy of her home, dances and stretches as she moves around her room. The provocation of these actions only comes from her cinematic treatment; the fact that she is unknowingly being watched. The gaze is what sexualizes her. This exemplifies the bifold act of looking that Mulvey identifies, where both the male character and the audience participate equally.

During this time, Shore was consumed with scoring duties for Peter Jackson’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, so PANIC ROOM was an assignment taken on precisely because of its low musical demands.
As it turns out, Shore’s work in PANIC ROOM is generally regarded as some of his best and most brooding. The score is complemented by a superb sound mix by David Fincher’s regular sound designer, Ren Klyce.
When done right, genre is a potent conduit for complex ideas and allegory with real-world implications. PANIC ROOM is essentially about two women fending off three male home invaders, but it is also about much more: the surveillance state, income equality, the switching of the parent-child dynamic…. the list goes on.
A visionary director like David Fincher is able to take a seemingly generic home invasion thriller and turn it into an exploration of themes and ideas. For instance, PANIC ROOMaffords Fincher the opportunity to indulge in his love for architecture, letting him essentially design and build an entire house from scratch.
The type of architecture that the house employs is also telling, adopting the handsome wood and crown molding of traditional brownstone houses found on the East Coast.
Architecture also serves an important narrative purpose, with the story incorporating building guts like air vents and telephone lines as dramatic hinging points that obstruct our heroes’ progress and build suspense.
Again, David Fincher employs low angle compositions to reveal the set ceiling in a bid to communicate the location’s “real-ness” as well as instill a sense of claustrophobia.
Fincher’s fascination with tech is woven directly into the storyline, which allows him to explore the dramatic potential of a concrete room with a laser-activated door and surveillance cameras/monitors.
The twist, however, is that despite all this cutting-edge technology (circa 2002, provided), both the protagonists and the antagonists have to resort to lo-fi means to advance their cause. Another aesthetic conceit that David Fincher had been playing with during this period is the idea of micro-sized objects sized up to a macro scale.
In FIGHT CLUB, this could be seen with the shot of the camera pulling back out of a trashcan, its contents seemingly as large as planets.

As I have watched his 1960 most popular and successful film “Psycho”, I decided to see the reason behind his success for this particular film.
The above YouTube video looks at how Hitchcock manipulates the audience into believing certain things as it was one of the first films where he experimented on creating a psychological subgenre of the thriller/horror genre.
As I found the part where the voiceover describes how secret hints are given to the audience about Norman being very unusual, was extremely interesting. For the reason that when the film switches to Norman’s point of view, after Janet Leigh’s brutal murder, the audience are left in the position Hitchcock wants us to be in, to reveal the film’s shock twist. This is evident through the cinematography used of absrtact camera angles where, Hitchock makes Norman Bates stand out in the frame and changing the audiences perception of his character; he appears extraordinary/different in comparison to Marion Crane. Throughout watching, the audience experience a variety of emotions such as tension for when Marion offers advice to Norman about his mother going into a care home, where he acts rather strangey, to a transition of Marion having power over him, then when she leaves the room, Norman stands up, reinforcing his superioty over her.
Also, Alfred Hitchcock manipulates the audience through film and narrative techniques; for instance the main focus of manipulation created is on the fact that the audience sympaphise with Norman Bates because he tells about his controlling mother and the audience believe this because we first see her silhoette up in the window of the Bates house, then reinforced by hearing Norman argue with his mother. It’s not until the very end of the film that the auidence learn that Norman dresses up as his mother; having a multiple personality disorder. But throughout watching, the audience don’t grow in hating him, instead the audience continue to feel sorry for how he is trapped in his life and can’t escape.
Furthermore, resulting in the auidence feeling anxxious when watching Norman cleanup and take Marion’s body into the trunk of a car, sinking it in a nearby swamp. But when the car stops sinking, the audience feel as though they are in Norman’s position; emotionally connected to someone who is meant to be the villain of the film, rather than it seeming like we are on his side, helping him. Which the soundtrack of high-pitch violins intensify the scene, creating suspense and tension.

This essay, then, is only a starting point for a broader project that would address the question of immanence in architecture, and propose a take on imaging that would re-conceptualise the relation between thought and perception on one hand, and the so-called architectural representations on the other. As for Colomina's text, illustrations of the work of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier have deliberately been omitted. The intention is for the reader to accompany the text with moving images, all of which have been taken from Mirza-Butler's installation-become-film Where a Straight Line meets a Curve.
 An often overlooked aspect of Adolf Loos' domestic interiors, writes Beatriz Colomina in 'The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism,' is that the windows are opaque, covered with curtains, or made difficult to access due to the in-built furniture – with the seating arrangement often placed in such a way that the occupant has their back to the window, facing the room (1992: 74-5). Each of these focal points establishes a theatre box oriented back towards the interior, she claims, and while this vantage point might provide a sense of protection by the virtue of being back-lit, it also inevitably draws attention to the person seated. The subsequent regimes of control established within the interior, represented in photographs, make it easy to imagine oneself in 'precise, static positions' whereby '[w]ith each turn, each return look, the body is arrested' (Colomina 1992: 75).
 Discussing the Moller and Müller houses specifically, she writes: 'The "voyeur" in the "theater box" has become the object of another's gaze; she is caught in the act of seeing, entrapped in the very moment of control. In framing a view, the theater box also frames the viewer. It is impossible to abandon the space, let alone leave the house, without being seen by those over whom control is being exerted. Object and subject exchange places. Whether there is actually a person behind either gaze is irrelevant' (1992: 82). This results in the inhabitants of the house becoming in Colomina's theatrical metaphor simultaneously actors and spectators and hence 'detached' from their own domestic space.

The Male Gaze
This transfer of sympathies from the male to the female raises interesting questions about Hitchcock’s intentions. You’ll note how Hitch lingers in Judy’s apartment as the twist is revealed, and has us literally inside her head during her and Scottie’s walk through the park. We get Novak’s POV, not Scottie’s, and she sees a happy couple laying in the grass, amidst fluttering birds and optimistic music. In this new light, the twisted tale becomes a masterful meditation on the male ego and the unattainable woman. We feel for Judy as she is repeatedly subjected to Scottie’s attempts to remake her into his “ideal object” and looks up at him with those tragic eyes to say, “Couldn’t you like me? Just me, the way I am?”
It is both a delicious ode to the helpless male fantasy and a scathing commentary supported by even the most strident feminist. As with all of Hitchcock’s films, one can debate whether it is a sick example of the “male gaze,” or a useful window into the dangers of the “male gaze.” I prefer the latter. While I agree with Laura Mulvey that Rear Window and Vertigo “cut to the measure of the male desire,” (E) I think the point is for us to admit and question that desire. It’s no coincidence that we begin to see Scottie in a different light, and we don’t like what we see. This is the true lesson of the film.
Such a plot could prove a bad actor’s nightmare, or a great actor’s dream role. When it comes to Jimmy Stewart, I don’t even have to say which is which. Vertigo was the last of four Hitchcock thrillers for Stewart, following the experimental Rope (1948), the voyeuristic Rear Window (1954) and the just-plain-fun The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955). There’s no question which was the most complex role of his career, showing a new dark side to the aw-shucks idealist from Capra lore.
Stewart had started exploring darker places in the ’50s, with questionable sanity in Harvey (1950) and nightmares plaguing his bounty hunt in The Naked Spur (1953).

Hitchcock manages to pull off another shocking scene with a sudden jump-out-of-your seat appearance of mother stabbing the detective once he reaches the top. Blood splatters on his face, and we follow the fall with the camera fixed on Arbogast’s face. The same use of screeching noise is set by Herrmann. Once he lands, Mrs. Bates continues the stabbing, the detective screams in horror and the scene fades to black.
The Arbogast scene is the second and last onscreen kill. Today, Hitchcock is often credited with creating the slasher sub-genre. Unfortunately, this triggered a chain of terrible motion pictures with the exception of the original “Halloween”. Most of the slasher pictures of the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 00’s overdo it with frequent kills every other scene instead of building up the murder scenes with character development. Therefore, we end up with a bunch of characters we don’t much care for getting chopped to pieces. In “Psycho” it was never about the violence, it was always about the tension leading up to the violence.
Fade in, Sam and Lila sit worried in a smoky room “Sam he said an hour or less”. Sam: “Yeah, It’s been three.” As I said before the pace is much faster in the second half. Hitchcock directs this half like it’s a sequel requiring different editing methods. Likewise, time passes faster at Norman’s place. A medium shot of Norman standing in front of the clear black swamp. He’s already done cleaning the mess. Sam arrives and looks for “Arbogast”. He calls his name a few times with no luck. The medium shot becomes a close up, again not through a cut but by Sam walking up to the lens. He curves his hands around his mouth and gives it his all. The call for Arbogast echoes into the next and same shot of Norman in front of the swamp. We move closer to him. As his head turn to the right facing the camera, the camera pans to the left towards him. A very well executed shot is the result as we end with a close up on a chilling expression on Norman’s shadowy face. He’s looking at his motel.
A transition directs us to a deep shot of the storeroom.

Putting their philosophy of superiority to use, and proving to themselves that they can get away with committing the “perfect murder”, college mates Brandon and Phillip (John Dall and Farley Granger) strangle their friend David Kentley to death in their apartment and store his body in a chest. The two are hosting a party later on with guests such as David’s father, his aunt, his girlfriend Janet, friend Kenneth, and Brandon and Phillip’s former school teacher Rupert Cadell. Adding insult to injury, the two use the chest David’s body is stuffed in as a makeshift buffet table for the party guest. The invitation of Cadell both angers and frightens Phillip, as he fears he is the one person to suspect something, while Brandon assures him that Rupert would be the only one to appreciate what they’ve done. Sure enough as the party goes on and David still doesn’t show up the guests get increasingly worried, and with Phillip’s behavior becoming more and more erratic, Rupert begins to have suspicions of his own.
I think at this point in time calling a Hitchcock movie intense is like saying it snows in the winter. Still, even by Hitchcock standards Rope is a nerve racking experience. It should come as no surprise to Hitchcock fanatics that he was able to create such tension in a limited setting as he did it a few years earlier with Lifeboat, but it’s still astounding he was able to achieve the mood that he did when you take into consideration that aside from the opening credits sequence, the film never leaves Brandon and Phillip’s apartment. There are no action scenes, no chase sequences or anything like that, nothing blows up. It’s obviously not a whodunit, as the culprits are clear as day, as is their motive so I’m not spoiling anything here. The suspense comes from the fact that there is always the constant reminder that just a few feet away from any one person in front of the camera there is a dead body lying in a chest, the dialogue and interactions between Brandon, Phillip and the party guests, especially Rupert. You’ll wince every time a character even glances towards that chest, and there’s one very brief moment involving the housekeeper that’s sure to make your heart skip a beat. Whenever the fact that David is late to the party is brought up, it’s quite gripping to see how Brandon, and especially Phillip react.

The dog is meant to distract the audience from guessing the surprise in the next scene. Hitchcock worked that way; he didn’t only control his cast and crew but his audience as well. With “Psycho”, the entire first act is a diversion.
I can only imagine the horror of sitting in a movie palace when “Psycho” first premiered. The audience must have felt excited having booked their tickets in advance and making it on time for the film. Hitchcock didn’t allow late entrances. So there they are sitting, excited about the next Hitchcock masterpiece. The lights dim, the black and white “A Paramount Release” logo appears on the big screen, and then total darkness as the logo fades to solid black. Suddenly, the first wave of Bernard Herrmann’s score fills the theater, the most horrifying music in film history. The black screen is split into stripes of grey during the opening credits. The audience doesn’t know it yet but this split bares significance.
There’s a dark side to every human being. We’re not 100% good. Occasionally we slip into that dark side. If you’re lucky and smart you can save yourself from letting the darkness overcome you. Here lies the true horror of “Psycho”, the dark side of the psyche. Our main character is Marion. She’s a young everyday working woman. Unfortunately she acts foolishly and tries to steal a lot of money from one of her customers. However, before meeting her fate –getting stabbed while cleaning off her sins in a shower – the guilt she feels deep down in her stomach pulls her out of the dark and back to normality. The film takes a turn there as we’re introduced to a much worse case of – the split. Norman plunged into madness and embraced darkness long before Hitchcock introduces us to him. Hitchcock’s choice to film in black and white was clearly not only to give the film a darker theme or to escape the sharp scissors of the censors; the black and white fits the theme of the picture.
“I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.”_Alfred Hitchcock
The movie starts one afternoon, as the camera moves from the outside of a city through a window into an apartment.

Richard Neutra: Chuey House
Since the beginning, protection from the elements was the initial motivation for the invention of Architecture. In the past this has been accomplished rather well with walls and sloped roofs. The walls of pre-modern structures were almost always load-bearing. This required them to have a certain thickness. This thickness also allowed the walls to serve as great insulators from temperature fluxes. Small windows allowed a glancing connection to nature. This need for connection as well as protection has been a vital duality in architecture since it’s beginnings. The use of small windows and light-filled courtyards allowed the benefits of nature to inhabit the dwellings while leaving the discomforting elements out.
In the Modern Era it’s evident that the desire for a closer connection to nature took root. The increased use of glass combined with the separation of structure from facade (Le Corbusier’s Domino frame) allowed this development to occur. For mainly spiritual reasons, the modern movement sought to blur the lines between inside and out. They sought to allow buildings to breath from under the weight of gravity. Architecture must protect, but beyond that the Modern Architects devised a number of tricks to give the illusion of free exchange between inside and outside. In this world of connection the wall disappears and the roof stands out as the main symbol of protection.
- Horizontal Thrust: The horizontal line is the line that goes along with nature. The vertical line declares its independence from nature. The emphasis of the horizontal can most clearly be seen in the early development of the Prairie Style by Frank Lloyd Wright. These early houses seek a connection with nature by blending into the horizontal countryside they inhabit. The house becomes less intrusive, less about being clearly man made, and more a part of their environment. From inside the low horizontal lines seen in railings and overhangs compliment the distant line on the horizon and include it as part of the aesthetic experience of the house. Naturally this would work best in the actual countryside where the horizon is uninterrupted. Prairie Houses in urban areas tend to lose this effect.
Mies Van Der Rohe: Farnsworth House demonstrating floor to ceiling glass and homogenous materiality.
-Floor to ceiling glass: The use of floor to ceiling glass is the most obvious and effective way to establish a visual connection between inside and out by foiling any obstructions of view. The perfect example of this is at the Farnsworth House.

Whispers?”
Norman: “Mother, she’s just a stranger. She’s hungry and it’s raining out.”
Mother: “Mother, she’s just a stranger. As if men don’t desire strangers. As if….(shuddering) I refuse to speak of disgusting things, because they disgust me!”
What follows is a dim and haunting wide-shot of the house in complete obscurity with creepy tree branches on both sides and dark clouds lingering in the sky. Like a house on a haunted hill, the cinematography is simply breathtaking and needs to be seen to be believed. Only one light shines, the window of the room where the shadow of an old woman roamed earlier.
Mother: “You understand, boy? Go on. Go tell her she’ll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with my food or my son! Or do I have to tell her cause you don’t have the guts? Huh, boy? You have the guts, boy?”
A radio actress by the name of Virginia Gregg perfected that spine-chilling voice of mother. In fact, it is done so well, there’s no way the audience would suspect she’s just Norman fulfilling his disorder. Not only that but the fact that mother offers to go tell the visitor herself only personifies her leaving the viewer with no hints to guess the twisted reality.
A few seconds later, my all time favorite two-shot arises. Holding a tray with the milk and sandwich, Norman stands to the left in front of a window. Marion is on the right in front of the door. Both are standing outside in front of the cabin. “I’ve caused you some trouble”, Marion says implying that she heard their conversation. To which he replies: “No…mother…my mother…what is the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.” Freeze the frame at that precise moment and observe the richness of the moment. Visually this shot speaks volumes of Hitchcock’s famous wit. In crisp clarity we see the reflection of Norman’s face on the outside window. Indeed “she isn’t quite herself today”, the answer is there visually. This may either be a coincidence or a stroke of genius. I like to think it’s the latter, for the blinds are half drawn providing the possibility of the reflection. It had to be intentional.
They move to the parlor because “eating in an office is just too officious”.

As Phillip becomes more and more guilt ridden about what he’s done, the danger of him exposing the crime becomes more real. The suspense is heightened even more when Rupert begins to have suspicions of his own, and it just keeps on building.
The classic Hitchcock device of discussing murder during dinner is put to perfect use here. We learn that Brandon took the Nietzsche-esque philosophical musings of Rupert during his school days to heart, which is why he feels Rupert would approve of what he and Phillip did. According to Rupert, murder is an art that only a few privileged and intellectually superior people, those who are above the average moral standings should be able to commit. The tension is heightened during this conversation as Brandon proudly boasts that he and Phillip are two of the “privileged” ones. This allows for some of Hitchcock’s trademark black humor to make an appearance, as Stewart’s character opines about how many of the worlds problems murder could solve, such as having trouble getting theatre tickets or getting into a restaurant, and that although he approves of murder, it shouldn’t be a free for all, it should be reserved for special occasions, such as “cut a throat week”, or “strangulation day”. There are other traces of dark humor thrown in as well, such as Brandon giving David’s father a stack of books tied together with the same rope that killed his son, and admittedly, the whole idea of serving food on the chest that the body is stored in, while extremely depraved, is somewhat comical. I’m sure Hitchcock got a real kick out of it.
Rope was one of Hitchcock’s most experimental films. Having the events of the film happen in real time, Hitchcock wanted to film to look as if it was shot in one long, continuous take. Of course this wasn’t possible in 1948, as he could only shoot for around 10 minutes per take, so he got around it by using numerous close up’s of various things and holding the shot while he reloaded the camera. If you look for them, it’s not hard to figure out where the cuts are, but you’ll be so engrossed in the story you won’t think to look for such things, but it’s just another example of how innovative and ahead of everybody else Hitchcock was when it came to filming techniques.

He is almost a caricature of eccentric, no nonsense law-enforcement (and a rare example of a sympathetically portrayed Hitchcock policeman). The audience’s sympathies readily shift to him, enabling us to jump the fence and join him in pursuing and punishing the murderer whom we were identifying, if not wholeheartedly rooting for, a few minutes earlier.
The fact that the film was originally shot in 3D leads to what is perhaps its most famous shot (Kelly’s overhead grab into the camera as she reaches for a pair of scissors while Swan holds her down on the desk), but elsewhere it is responsible for some rather awkward compositions (the long scene in which Milland tricks Swan into committing the crime is almost entirely dominated by a series of boxy table lamps). Nevertheless, Hitchcock moves his camera magnificently around the set. The screen view is directed into otherwise innocuous places by swoops, zooms and a series of sharply angled overhead shots that make certain scenes, including parts of the ‘murder’ itself, look as though they were captured on surveillance cameras.
Dial M for Murder is a compact study in the sinister minutiae of domestic life, so it is only appropriate that its climax should manage to milk a high degree of tension from the question of whether a certain character will or will not walk through a door. In all, it is a rare and accomplished example of the work of Hitchcock the Minimalist.
– Ben Stephens

(This is the favorite part of every male the Siren has ever discussed the movie with.) Still, there's nothing particularly daring about pointing out to a movie audience that they want to be entertained, or even titillated, by other people's lives.
The real question of Rear Window isn't about the morality of looking, it's about the ethics of intervention. A little less than a decade after the movie's release, a young woman was murdered in Kew Gardens, Queens, stabbed to death within earshot of neighbors who mostly dismissed her screams. While later research led to doubts about whether the neighbors realized Kitty Genovese was fighting for her life, the story passed into legend, the ultimate indictment of people not wanting to get involved, forever to be cited as an example of the unique callousness of New Yorkers.
Rear Window is Kitty Genovese in reverse: rather than "I didn't want to get involved," it's New Yorkers getting very involved indeed. "I'm not much on rear-window ethics," says Lisa, but the movie asks us to become just that. At what point are you looking at things you shouldn't--when you witness one neighbor drunkenly trashing his work, or another's despairing loneliness? And when are you obligated to act--when you see that neighbor trying to kill herself? All right, that one's easy. But how about when you suspect a crime--any crime, let alone a murder--but haven't a thing to prove it, and can't get the police interested, either?
Only three creatures in the movie pay a real price for observing, and in all cases their undoing comes when they get involved. Jeff breaks his other leg. Thorwald (Raymond Burr), the murderer, sees Jeff across the courtyard and comes after him, only to get caught. Presumably he will pay the ultimate price off-camera. But the one creature whose curiosity ends in death during the running time is the neighbor's dog, who scratches in the flowerbeds where Thorwald has buried some part of his wife. When the dog's body is discovered, his owner flings her anger across the courtyard:
Which one of you did it? Which one of you killed my dog? You don't know the meaning of the word 'neighbor.' Neighbors like each other, speak to each other, care if anybody lives or dies. But none of you do.

Jewellery design by Joan Joseff, inspired:
I can’t get over the beauty of this dress, how superbly it complements the angelic Grace Kelly:
I can’t get this movie out of my mind – I’m not a student of Hitchcock, I don’t know what he set out to achieve….
to entertain? I’m sure that that was always one of his goals and, for me, in that respect, he succeeded.
Suspense? A ton of it! The intensity, events running too fast for the broken-legged Jeff, his loss of control, peaking when Lisa is being attacked by Thorwald and there’s nothing he can do to help except to hope that the police get there before he, Thorwald, kills her – add into the mix Jeff’s guilt – Lisa wouldn’t have been in the situation if Jeff hadn’t dragged her into his voyeuristic obsession. And the suspense, reaching a crescendo when Thorwald can be heard, slowly, heavily, thumping his way up the stairs towards Jeff’s apartment, Jeff clearly terrified…
An artistic creation? For sure.
Social comment? It’s there!!
– and notice, after that emotional ‘speech’, one of the partygoers:
“Come on, let’s go back in, it’s only a dog”,
clearly, not everyone took on board the poor lady’s admonishment of society!
On the subject of voyeurism:
Stella: “In the old days, they’d put your eyes out with a red hot poker…. What people ought to do is get outside and look in for a change….We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change…”
Jeff clearly has a voyeuristic obsession – he’s bored, it’s entertainment for him but the irony is that, with so much time on his hands, he’d do well to spend some of it taking stock of his own life (although, admittedly, his obsession does lead to the removal of a murderer from society).
Jeff sees, in the microcosm of life that is reflected in the courtyard, confirmation of his belief that marriage is not an institution into which he should dive:
Jeff’s Editor: It’s about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome and bitter old man.

Although he's plenty nasty, you get the impression that if he wasn't approached with this murder business, he might happily go on his way with other strictly legal stuff. However, he is presented with the chance for a big payday, and the fact that he has to kill two people to collect is not a big obstacle to him.
Some other notable Walsh movies - Blade Runner, Bound for Glory, Reds, The Milagro Beanfield War, and Silkwood.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Sunday, November 12, 2006
The Set-Up - The injured photographer L. B. Jeffries (James Stewart) has decided that his neighbour Thorwald may have killed his wife. Jeffries' girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) decides to investigate while he's away. She is trying to find the woman's wedding ring.
She climbs into his apartment....
While Jeffries watches with his telephoto lens.
The ring isn't in her purse....Gosh, she's purty!
A critical error - Jeffries is distracted by another neighbour who appears to be taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
He doesn't notice Thorwald coming home.
He calls the police.
Thorwald catches Lisa in his apartment, and starts to assault her.
He turns out the lights, but the police arrive, just in time.
As the cops question Thorwald, Lisa indicates that she has the ring.
Thorwald sees her pointing it out....
And looks across the way to see who is watching.
I apologize up front for choosing what is arguably the most obvious Hitchcock "Moment of Distinction", but I can't help it - I love this scene. I have probably seen Rear Window 8-10 times, and I get goose bumps every single time I watch this sequence.
A couple of things. Stewart is just brilliant in this scene, his panic rising as he watches the woman he loves being threatened right in front of his eyes, and he can't help her. The other thing has had volumes written about it - How Hitchcock turns the tables on Jeffries (and us) by letting him be an observer, and them suddenly thrusting him into an active role in the drama across the way. When Thorwald looks over with that icy stare, the message is clear. You're involved now, buddy.
Blackmail is Hitch's first sound film, but curiously, it doesn't start out that way.

Also note how in the title sequence there are shades opening almost as if the audience is the voyeur for this picture.
Next- lets talk about the under rated and often taken for granted set of this movie- its a whole neighborhood in a sound stage- and that’s something you rarely see anymore (as its too expensive!). This is a set with no green screen, or digital apartments- they are really there and they are built. From what I know- they used two sound stages and the apartments were the street level while places like the courtyard were actually the basement.
All apartments were made livable, and Hitchcock would give direction through an earpiece that all the actors had. Watch the video for the opening scene of the neighborhood and courtyard- just mind blowing on how that was all created!!
Finally- Lets discuss Grace Kelly in this movie!! This is her ultimate glamour role, her ultimate Hitchcock role and her most well known role. I feel only she could be Lisa Carol Fremont and if someone else like Vera Miles or Kim Novak would have played the role- this picture would not have been as believable or memorable. Lisa Fremont is so proactive, more than just the “girlfriend”and sidekick- as she’s the one doing the action scenes that Jeff can’t. I believe Hitch spent the rest of his career trying to find another actress to create a role such as this- but naturally and utterly failed, finding good, but somewhat sub-parr actresses for big roles in his pictures. Its so easy to take for granted how phenomenal Grace is in this role!!!
In Sept 2017 (the day of Grace’s death) I had the pleasure of viewing Rear Window on the big screen and I can say that it absolutely changes your experience. Seeing every moment play out on the big screen makes it all more thrilling and dazzling.
Click here to read a post I did concerning the fashions of Rear Window.
To Grace I will say that on this happiest day her birthday-I hope we can all pay her a great tribute, and I hope she is thrilled and perhaps touched that there are so many young people who still adore her and her movies!
It’s here everyone! Today begins the 4th Wonderful Grace Kelly blogathon! And I can’t wait to read all of our wonderful reviews! Remember I’m doing today’s posts and Ginnie at The Wonderful World of Cinemais doing tomorrow’s posts (which is Grace’s 89th Birthday!)

One key scene that is crucial in the film is where Leigh tries to meet her stalker as there is that sense of fear that is prominent in the film where Carpenter uses a nice close-up to play into the suspense.
The usage of the medium and wide shots help add to that suspense where there are moments where the camera shows the perspective of the stalker where he watches and listens to any of Leigh’s conversations. Carpenter also uses moments of misdirection to play up the suspense where an audience think will something happen but then nothing or a misunderstanding which is key to what makes the film work. Especially in the climax as it shows who is this person that is stalking Leigh and what has he been doing where it is quite chilling but it is also riveting as it has Leigh finally confronting her stalker. Overall, Carpenter creates a thrilling yet engrossing film about a woman being stalked from the other building of her apartment.
Cinematographer Robert B. Hauser does excellent work with the film‘s cinematography as its usage of shadows and light help play to some of the suspense in scenes where Leigh‘s apartment would go through power surges as well as some of the scenes set at night. Editor Richard Korbitz does nice work with the editing as it‘s largely straightforward with some rhythmic cut and fade-outs for commercial break transitions. Art director Philip Barber and set decorator Donald J. Sullivan do fantastic work with the look of Leigh‘s penthouse apartment as well as the TV studio she works at. Sound mixer Don Rush does terrific work with the sound as it help play into the suspense with its usage of sparse noise. The film’s music by Harry Sukman is superb for its orchestral-based score as it has some dramatic bombast as well as some eerie pieces to play into its suspense.
The film’s brilliant cast feature some notable small roles from Grainger Hines as a co-worker at the TV station, Len Lasser as a mysterious man in the apartment, and Charles Cyphers in a terrific role as police investigator Gary Hunt who is a friend of Paul as he tries to figure things out. Adrienne Barbeau is fantastic as Sophie as a co-worker who helps Leigh in trying to find the stalker as well as figure out all of the scenarios. David Birney is excellent as Paul as Leigh’s new boyfriend who is a philosophy professor that tries to figure out all of the angles but also go to those that he knew who could help Leigh.

Stewart’s humor and humanity ensure that we always stay on his side and know that, debilitated as he is, we’re not exactly seeing him at his best.
Among the supporting cast, Thelma Ritter gets a lot of the best lines and delivers a great classic-era supporting performance. Her caustic but compassionate middle-aged New York dame might be a mid-century stereotype, but such woman did – and I’m sure still do – walk the streets of New York; Ritter evoked them perfectly. Even Wendell Corey, playing a cop (almost never a very good role in a Hitchcock picture), manages to get a few wry laughs even so. Though he has few fully audible lines, Perry Mason/Ironside to-be Raymond Burr is a perfect combination of fearsome menace and menacing fear as the almost pitiable Lars Thorwald. In an entirely pantomime role, Judith Evelyn is heart-melting as the deeply depressed “Miss Lonelyheart.”
(Trivia buffs take note: A less crucial supporting player I can’t resist mentioning is Ross Bagdasarian, who plays a sad-sack composer trying to complete a new song. Bagdasarian was a musician and composer in real life who wound up making a mint just a few years later when he realized the novelty hit-making potential of sped-up tape, rechristened himself David Seville, and started working with some upstart chipmunks.)
For all the admiration Hitchcock inspires, its fair to say that he can be a rather icy director even in many of his greatest films. Not true here. Along with his personal favorite, 1943’s great “Shadow of a Doubt,” “Rear Window” is, to me, a rich and warmhearted film, even as it goes to some (strictly off-screen) gruesome places almost unheard of in mid-‘50s Hollywood. It’s a combination that works better than you could ever think. As late as the ‘80s, when onscreen mayhem was about as routine as it is now, certain scenes caused actual screams from theater audiences.
Though many critics see “Rear Window” as a deeply cynical work about the innate corruption of the human soul, to me and many others it is a witty and compassionate work that explores and partially forgives human frailty.

T hese MacGuffins prevail the audience spinning in a certain direction while the real action was getting ready to come in from the side. A true MacGuffin will get you where you need to go but never overshadow what is ultimately there (Alfred Hitchcock Film Techniques 2).Although Hitchcock was greatly identified for his suspense techniques, his movies would not be complete without their creative cinematography. He was excellent at knowing what to film, when to cut to a different shot, and how to abridge a scene after it was completed. Because Hitchcock began directing silent films, he liked to work purely in the visual and not rely upon words at all (Alfred Hitchcock 2).Camera angles make a great contribution to the quality of Hitchcocks films. He incorporates his theory of proximity to plan out each scene (Bays 2). Essentially, this means a certain scene would call for a certain camera shot in order to change its emotion. The closer the camera is to the characters eyes, the more em otion the audience could see. If Hitchcock wanted to increase suspense, he would use a high angle shot above the characters head. In a way, the camera also acts as a human eye because it gazes around objects as if it truly contained curiosity. His idea of personifying the camera remains unvarying because when films did not have sound, visuals were the only form of communicating with the audience.In order to Hitchcock always welcomed innovation in film technology, but in the 1950s he reveled in it (Silet 2).As a result of corporate trust these three factors, Alfred Hitchcocks movies will forever be considered some of the most revolutionary works of art known to man. It is also not an exaggeration to claim that his films elevated the medium as a form of art in the minds of the public in ways that exceeded the work of more self-consciously artistic directors. And that is not a bad accomplishment for a director who set out merely to entertain (Silet 3).

Ever go on a Centrifugal force ride? The ones that hold you in place as they pick up speed and push you to the edge. You try to move your arm, but it’s dead. You get pushed further and further back into your seat while a weight sits on top of your chest and pulls at your face. Then BANG. There’s that sought after endorphin rush.
Well, that’s what watching The Woman in the Window (1944) feels like. A nail biter noir that lays on the tension until you’re pushed back into your seat and can’t turn away. Directed by Fritz Lang and considered a masterpiece of film-noir, The Woman in the Window has been added to Eureka! ever-growing Master of Cinema collection.
With his family away on vacation, psychology professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) has the chance encounter with Alice Reed (Joan Bennett), the model for a painting he has been admiring. Accompanying her home to discuss the artwork, Wanley is attacked by Alice’s wealthy jealous boyfriend. Killing him in self-defence, Wanley and Alice realise that to go to the police will ruin them both, and work to cover up the crime. But as the police investigate, an ex-cop (Dan Duryea) begins to pile the pressure onto Wanley.
This is probably one of the tensest movies I have watched in a while. Lang adds layer after layer, building it up to breaking point. And what’s interesting is Lang doesn’t do it through tight, claustrophobic, close up shots. Most of the scenes are shot at Full/American range and at high angles. A step away from noir’s classic low angled medium/close shots. Low key lighting and thick oily shadows hide most of the detail of the scene, forcing you to focus on the action. That’s the key. Lang makes the viewer watch the work on the screen. Turning the psychological visuals up to full force this, with the obvious exceptions of M (1931) and Metropolis (1927), is one of Lang’s most significant works as a director. Despite being labelled a noir, The Woman in the Window goes back to the earlier expressionist and proto-noir of Lang’s German career.
That said it’s not without its issues. Wanley and Reed, for the most part, are flat and two dimensional.

It isn’t an accident that the camera continues to stalk Wendy and Danny as it does in the hotel, when they first explore the maze. Kubrick has said: “One of the things that horror stories can do is show us the archetypes of the unconscious, we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly.” The structure of the maze allows for such an indirect confrontation of these dark forces. Symbolically the maze transcends physical time and space. When Danny is fleeing Jack at the denouement, he leaves the hotel and is plunged straight into another terrifying labyrinth, the hedge maze, where Jack is ultimately trapped and frozen solid in time. Danny eludes Jack in the maze through his skill both in navigating the corridors of the hotel, established earlier through his adventures on his tricycle, and similarly the hedge maze.
The film creates different spaces within the hotel, such as Jack’s writing space, the Torrance living quarters, the hotel corridors, the gold ballroom and the outdoor maze. Maria Falsetto observes that these spaces are all endowed with “specific characteristics” and are all presented to the viewer differently through the camera. When viewing the spaces Jack occupies throughout the film we can realise that the cramped, enclosed space of the Volkswagen at the beginning is mirrored by the claustrophobic living quarters and ultimately the maze that encloses Jack’s frozen body. During the chase sequence in the maze, the film repeatedly cuts between varying points-of-view within the maze as Jack chases Danny with views of Wendy wandering the labyrinth of hallways inside the hotel and for the first time, interacting with the ghostly residents. This crosscutting extenuates this idea that runs throughout the film that the feeling of claustrophobia yet isolation is present both within the hotel, and also in relation to the snow-bound exterior. In the scene where we see Jack throwing the tennis ball around in a senseless boredom, the interior is linked to the exterior through Jack’s sense of ‘mastery’ over his family as he looks into the model of the maze. The camera zooms into the maze and we see the tiny figures of Wendy and Danny moving, transforming the model into the real. There is sense of cerebral intent from Kubrick, portraying the hotel as almost human with each section of its overall space having distinct characteristics.

Scared when imagining the discovery of her crime in a narrated conversation between her boss and her co-worker (played by the excellent Patricia Hitchcock) and confident when we hear Mr. Cassidy cursing her. A creepy smirk curves her lips. Marion still wants to go through it.
The viewer notices that the bright sky turn darker and darker, and eventually it starts to rain. Marion pulls over to sleep it off at some motel, the Bates motel. The first half of the movie takes place in two days, a continuous moment-to-moment spectrum of events. The pace and movement through time changes afterwards and is well defined through editing.
Marion pulls up in the rain to the Bates motel and sees the moving silhouette of an old woman in the upstairs window of the mansion. Hitchcock often features familiar landmarks in his films. In “Psycho”, he creates one with the Bates mansion. The gothic mansion stands on top of a haunting hill like “it’s hiding from the world”. The Bates mansion is now one of the most famous film sets around the world, the presence of the mansion is so powerful, it’s like a main character. Anyway, Marion honks the horn of her new car. Seconds later, Norman appears on the stairs in front of the haunting mansion up the hill. He then runs towards the motel to serve his only customer of the night. What follows are some of the most humorous Hitchcock moments of all time. (*Humorous only on repeated viewings of the film)
Norman Bates – cinema’s most famous villain. Anthony Perkins pulls it off right from the start. They check in and we are first introduced to Norman. Perkins plays the role in an oddly chilling loose and naturalistic manner. Marion signs as ‘Marie Samuels’. Again, the alias signature is pathetic as it’s proof of her not doing a good job of hiding her real identity. Marie is too close to her real name, Samuels is her boyfriend’s name. Norman asks her to write her home address as well. She looks at the newspaper that reads ‘Los Angeles Times’ and chooses that city rather than Arizona. “Los Angeles” she says. Meanwhile Norman chooses something else, a key to the room she’ll be spending the night in. Unlike the three suspicious men prior to that scene, Norman doesn’t suspect a thing. Why?

Final scene, she puts down the book and picks up a glamour magazine, everything back in place.
Great story but, of course, what makes it a special movie, one of the greatest ever produced, is the Hitchcock treatment – as we know, he didn’t win a ‘Best Director’ Oscar for this movie, a Nomination, yes, but not a win, no Best Director Oscars for any of his movies and judging by his Acceptance ‘Speech’ when picking up his Honorary Oscar – the Irving G. Schwartz Memorial Award – in 1968, he was, understandably, extremely miffed!! ‘Rear Window’ was Nominated in 4 categories, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ (John Michael Hayes), ‘Best Cinematography – Colour’ (Robert Burks) and ‘Best Sound Mixing’ (Loren L. Ryder) but not a single Oscar win: not just a travesty but that brings the Academy into disrepute and makes a mockery of the institution:
The construction of the (indoor) set, a ‘mock-up’ of a Greenwich Village courtyard, was a monumental task, brilliantly achieved by set designers Hal Pereira and Joseph MacMillan Johnson.
The lighting, I’ve never seen anything quite like it before, the sky throughout the movie, the light on the characters – no lighting effects are needed to highlight/emphasize Grace Kelly’s beauty but Robert Burks’ (Cinematography/Director of Photography) talent with the camera and lighting leaves us aghast.
The music score, by Franz Waxman, is inextricably part of the movie although Waxman’s input, crucial as it is, is limited, ‘just’ accompanying the opening and closing credits and he composed the tune ‘Lisa’ which, in the movie, is written by the songwriter/pianist (Ross Bagdasarian).
‘Lisa’ is one of the most beautiful pieces of ‘music from the movies’ that I have ever heard:
The rest of the soundtrack is sublime, Bing Crosby’s ‘To See You Is To Love You’, ‘Mona Lisa’, “That’s Amoré” and music from Leonard Bernstein and Richard Rodgers amongst others.
….and the clothes…Edith Head, 35 Oscar Nominations, 8 wins (but not one for this movie, not even a Nomination??!!), she surpassed herself! The creations which adorn Grace Kelly are exquisite – Grace is breathtaking!

The obvious option, at least to us today, would be to use more shots than Griffith does; we think that increasing the cutting pace builds up excitement. Interestingly, however, Suspense uses only a couple of more shots than The Lonely Villa within a comparable running time. (5) We usually expect that American films become more rapidly cut as the 1910s go on, but this isn’t the case here. Shortly, I’ll suggest why.
Smalley and Weber recast Griffith’s parallel editing in several ways. For instance, The Lonely Villa prolongs the phone conversation between husband and wife, building suspense through the husband’s instruction to use his revolver on the thugs. Suspense, by contrast, doesn’t dwell on the telephone conversation but devotes more time (and shots) to the chase along the highway. That’s because Weber and Smalley have complicated the chase by having the husband pursued by the irate motorist and the police, something that doesn’t happen in the Griffith film.
Just as important, Smalley and Weber revise the crosscutting schema through framings that are quite bold for 1913. For example, Griffith’s tramps break into the house in long shot, and they move laterally across the frame.
But Weber and Smalley’s tramp sneaks steadily up the stairs, into a menacing extreme close-up.
Elsewhere, Suspense gives us close views of the wife and of the door as the tramp breaks in. There are oblique angles on the back door of the house, and virtually Hitchcockian point-of-view shots when the wife sees the tramp breaking in and he looks straight up at her.
What struck me most forcibly on watching the film again was the way in which Weber and Smalley’s daring framings serve as equivalents for parallel editing. In effect, they revise the crosscutting schema by putting several actions into a single frame. The most evident, and the most famous, instances are the triangulated split-screen shots. They cram together three lines of action: the wife on the phone, the husband on the phone, and the tramp’s efforts to break into the house (here, finding the key under the mat). (6)
Split-screen effects like this were common enough in early cinema, especially for rendering telephone conversations. Eileen Bowser points out that the three-frame division was one variant, with a landscape separating the two callers.

The camera appears to dolly up to the ceiling while keeping her profile in the shot. This conveys the effect of her floating up to the light shade and ceiling rose. The patterns made by the light on the ceiling blur and dissolve.
The directors used mise en scene to add depth to the narratives in their films, particularly before the addition of sound in the 1930s. One element of mise en scene used was juxtaposition within the frame. This was created by a defined contrast of light and dark areas. Polanski has incorporated these elements into Repulsion by most importantly filming it in black and white. In this scene Carol’s white skin, hair and costume is contrasted with the dark, poorly lit spaces of the flat. The lighting (and lack of it) is emphasised. This use of light also appears to give the film a painterly effect. In this scene the whole set appears to be two dimensional as line and shape are emphasised in the ceiling roses and light shades, the walls seem to melt and merge and the furniture takes on a cartoon - like appearance.
Another element of mise-en-scene used by German expressionist directors was shadows. German and Scandinavian folktales often included the Dammerung – a world created by twilight in which objects could suddenly spring to life. (Titford 21) The flat with its low lighting and large patches of darkness appears to be a strange reality where the objects inside it and the building itself become eerily alive. Polanski uses a lot of shadow in the rooms and hall as well as the shadows on the ceiling cast by the light shades in the living room and bedroom. This gives a visual effect of shapes merging from the darkness, of the shadows becoming alive.
All the scenes inside the flat were shot in a specially made studio set. ( Butler 75) Polanski said “What I like is an extremely realistic setting in which there is something that does not fit with the real. This is what gives it an atmosphere.”(Butler 179) He had the living room and the bathroom reconstructed on a much larger scale for the later scenes. (Butler 76) This gives the audience the effect of seeing the room from Carol’s personal perspective. It is an attempt to show a character’s subjective reality on film. Representation of the subjective experience as art was one of the primary aims of Expressionism.

The scene is a montage of a sequence of shots showing Arbogast in different hotels, which suggests the passage of time. Finally, Arbogast reaches the Bates motel.
Arbogast investigates right away. He makes the purpose of his visit clear and shows Norman a picture of Marion. Naturally, Norman is scared and tries to end their conversation as soon as humanly possible. “Well, no one’s stopped here for a couple of weeks.” Arbogast insists he take a look at the picture before “committing” himself. This is acting at its best. At first, Norman is relaxed offering his candy. Gradually as the pressure build up, Perkins’s performance intensifies. Arbogast catches a lie when Norman mentions a couple visiting “last week” and asks to take a look at the register. Perkins chews faster and harder on the candy (the candy was his idea). Norman takes another look at the picture and admits she was here but he didn’t recognize the picture at first because her hair was all wet. The showering of questions heightens the pressure and Perkins drives his performance into iconic status. We get it all complete with facial tics and stuttering words.
Being the great private detective that he is, Arbogast gets a more complete story by cornering Norman with questions. Moments later he spots the shadowy old woman in the upstairs mansion window. More of Norman’s lies are fished out and Arbogast takes another direction. He pressures Norman with the “let’s assume” method. To which, Norman mistakenly slips the words “Let’s put it this way. She may have fooled me but she didn’t fool my mother.” Now, Arbogast wants to meet the mother. To Norman that’s crossing the line, and so he asks him to leave.
A phone call later, the private-eye returns to the motel to fulfill his satisfaction. The sequence leading up to his murder mirrors that of Marion since both enter Norman’s patrol prior to their deaths. We also get the stuffed birds shots, only for some reason Hitchcock reverses them with the crow shot first and the owl afterwards. Nevertheless, the viewer is put in the same uncomfortable mood.
Arbogast goes up to the mansion, and step by step climbs the stairway.

Each of his films has been full of moments of red-herring disquiet, but he has never laid such a bland set of ambushes as in Family Plot. The Master makes unsettling use of an oaken-looking woman in a jewelery shop, whom Blanche cheerfully asks if her sign is Leo; of a brick wall that comes open and then closes hermetically, causing steep claustrophobia; of a remote-control garage-door gadget; of a fragment of bishop’s red robe shut in the bottom of a car door in a garage, making one think of the gaudy socks of the unlosable corpse in The Trouble with Harry (1955); of an overhead shot of a weeping woman hurrying through a maze of paths in a cemetery, pursued by Bruce Dern; of a woman physician, a disgruntled old man in shirtsleeves, and identical-twin mechanics, who are successive false trails in Blanche’s chase; of a genteel chiming doorbell on the front door of the thieves’ house. Hitchcock’s ominous mechanical devices and his dark clues leading nowhere build up in us a farcical discomfiture. We are like oversensitive princesses troubled by peas under mattresses.
But Family Plot does not rest on the fostering of anxiety. Hitchcock allows himself a camaraderie with the audience which makes this film one of the saltiest and most endearing he has ever directed. It is typical of the picture that he should have the sagacity and technique to bring the terrifying car incident to such an un-troubling close. Only a very practiced poet of suspense could slacken the fear without seeming to cheat and end the sequence without using calamity. With this picture, he shows us that he understands the secret of the arrow that leaves no wound and of the joke that leaves no scar. Sometimes in his career, Hitchcock has seemed to manipulate the audience; in this, his fifty-third film, he is our accomplice, turning his sense of play to our benefit. There is something particularly true pitched in his use of the talent of Barbara Harris. She has never before seemed so fully used. The film finishes on her, as it begins. She goes mistily upstairs in pursuit of the enormous diamond that the villains have stolen. Lumley watches her. She seems to be in a trance. Maybe she has got supernatural powers, after all.

Title: Psycho (1960)
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Psycho is a 1960’s American Thriller/ suspense film about a woman who is hiding at a motel after embezzling money from her employer. It is there she meets a man who is under the domination of his mother. The film is based on the Nobel by Robert Bloch by the same name.
The noir thriller starred Anthony Perkins, playing as the character of Norman Bates. The film connotes many generic aspects of the thriller genre, such as chiaroscuro lighting which is used in films to intensify the atmosphere. In this film the lighting is used to indicate the diversities of the film and Norman Bates’ character. Although the story begins to follow Marian Crane, Hitchcock has used hidden signifiers that link back to the madness of Norman Bates.
The Iconic Shower Scene
In the iconic shower scene of Psycho the first signifier of the thriller genre is the non-diegetic music which creates melancholic atmosphere amongst the audience, and helps them to build sympathy towards Marion Crane as she is shown alone sitting in her motel room writing figures and calculating, she then tears them up, and later puts them in the toilet; this implies that Marion is ‘flushing’ her hopes of survival away (down the drain). She is sat to a desk in an unglamorous room, which is dark and shadowed, which is how Hitchcock portrays her villainous character. This can be inter-textually referenced to ‘Essex Boys’ when we are introduced to Jason through the murky, dirty car windscreen and we see half of his body immerged into the shadows; which implied that Jason has ominous qualities.
In this famous Shower scene, Marion Crane is in a very vulnerable position, the audience are aware of what is happening; whereas she is unaware; this enables the audience to connect and sympathise with her. When Marion closes the door shut, she creates a generic claustrophobic environment which creates suspension – the audience can tell that within the confined space there is no way Marion can escape ; she is trapped. This can be inter-textually referenced to Witness, when Samuel is stuck in the small enclosed space in the toilet cubical. The confined space shrinks further when she removes her clothing (making her vulnerable) and draws the shower curtain.

Both Siodmak and Lang emphasize composition:
elaborate visual patterns made up by the geometry of the image
they are displaying. Like Lang, Siodmak is a heavily architectural
director. Many of Siodmak's compositions depend heavily on the
use of architectural backgrounds for their structure.
Criss Cross has numerous scenes shot on staircases, and
sloping locations that are staircase like. There is the nightclub,
with its descending levels; the sloping exit of the armored car
company; the staircase in Lancaster's house, and the hilly Angel's
Flight neighborhood of Los Angeles, with its many outdoor staircases
and sloping sidewalks. The use of staircases is very Lang like.
However, Lang's stairs tend to go steeply up and down, whereas
those of Criss Cross tend to form large sloping surfaces
at 45 degree angles. This gives Criss Cross a unique feel.
It is if much of the film takes place on sloping ground. There
is an unstable quality. It is also as if the characters were constantly
under the influence of powerful forces dragging them off in uncertain
directions: gravity, due to the slopes they stand on, and the
forces of fate and crime, due to the plots they are engaged in.
Siodmak also uses that favorite Lang device, the mirror shot.
Here the scenes in the hospital are especially ingenious and elaborate.
There is also a striking nocturnal drive to the beach house towards
the end of Criss Cross. It echoes similar nocturnal drives
in Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). Both films
also look forward to similar drives at the opening of Robert Aldrich's
classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
The armored car robbery is conducted with the use of tear gas;
the crooks use gas masks to protect themselves. Both of the features
are familiar from the German films of Fritz Lang. The gas masks
are a visually striking figure of style. They introduce as disorienting,
surrealist look to the film. Lang liked masks in general. He collected
primitive masks, and they show up in both his German films, and
his American film noirs, such as The Secret Beyond the Door
Near the beginning of the robbery, Siodmak cuts to an overhead
shot. This is not purely vertical, like the Rodchenko angle.

Norman takes a peak through the peephole and watches Marion undress. He then walks out of his office, up the stairs to the mansion. Once inside, he takes a step up the stairs and suddenly changes his mind and goes to the kitchen. As the audience, we know that Mrs. Bates is upstairs. It’s a simple scene the purpose of which is to distract the viewer from outguessing the master.
Meanwhile Marion calculates how much cash she’ll have to return out of her own pockets. ($700) After tearing the note to pieces she looks around and can’t find a bin and so she flushes it down the toilette. This was the first time the flushing of a toilette was seen on screen. The audience must have felt shocked at the sight. Yet it’s only a warm up to the major shock that follows. Hitchcock once said that the toilet shot is a “vital component to the plot”. My guess is it foreshadows the shower scene. After the brutal murder, we get a close-up of Marion’s blood flushing down the bathtub hole.
In probably the most famous, and well edited scene in all of cinema, also known as the shower scene, Hitchcock uses editing and sound as cinematic manipulation to create a carefully thought out horrific murder scene. Perfection is the result. In less than one minute, we witness a combination of 78 shots, in relation to the sound of a knife slashing against skin. We never actually see the knife enter the woman’s flesh, yet we’re convince we do through the sight of stabbing (hand motion), sound effects, the musical score (horrible animalistic screeching), and of course the careful editing. Celluloid cuts replace flesh cuts. When Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut that “Psycho” belongs to filmmakers, he wasn’t joking.
By exposing the audience to forty-five seconds of nonstop violence without actually showing any, Hitchcock leaves it up to our imagination. (Truffaut) Imagination has no limits which is why the scene is timeless and just as shocking half a century later. The shock is not only the sudden bombardment of cuts but the fact that he killed off his leading lady. We looked through her eyes, listened to her thoughts and witnessed her actions only to see her naked body slashed to an ugly death. With more than an hour to go, anything is possible.

Featuring James Stewart in the leading role, Rope was based on the real Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s, Rope is also among the earliest openly gay-themed films to emerge from the Hays Office–controlled Hollywood studio era.
With Strangers on a Train (1951), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Hitchcock combined many of the best elements from his preceding British and American films. Two men casually meet and speculate on removing people who are causing them difficulty. One of the men, though, takes this banter entirely seriously. With Farley Granger reprising some elements of his role from Rope, Strangers continued the director's interest in the narrative possibilities of homosexual blackmail and murder.
MCA head Lew Wasserman, whose client list also included James Stewart and Janet Leigh among other actors who would appear in Hitchcock's films, had a significent impact in packaging and marketing Hitchcock's films from the 1950s and on. With Wasserman's help, Hitchcock not only received tremendous creative freedom from the studios, but with Paramount's profit-sharing contract, Hitchcock received substantive financial rewards as well.
Three very popular films, all starring Grace Kelly, followed. Dial M for Murder (1954) was adapted from the popular stage play by Frederick Knott. This was originally another experimental film, with Hitchcock using the technique of 3D cinematography, although the film was apparently never released in this format at first; it did receive screenings in the early 1980s in 3D form. Rear Window starred James Stewart again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Here, the wheelchair-bound Stewart observes the movements of his neighbours across the courtyard and becomes convinced one of them has murdered his wife. Like Lifeboat and Rope, the movie was photographed almost entirely within the confines of a small space: Stewart's tiny studio apartment overlooking the massive courtyard set. To Catch a Thief, set in the French Riviera, starred Kelly and Cary Grant.
1958's Vertigo again starred Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film was a commercial failure, but has come to be viewed by many as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces.
Hitchcock followed Vertigo with three very different films, which were all massive commercial successes.

When Roger Thornhill is driving we see the bonnet of the car and you look down to the Mercedes Benz sign and it appears to look like a crosshair, I think this means that people are being targeted, this also happens in the opening scene when you look down onto the mass of people hurrying about. People’s paths are crossing and it gives the impression of a crosshair from a rifle also giving the opinion that people are being targeted.
This again happens when Roger Thornhill spots a plane flying towards him and leaves a trail behind it, the trail is 90 degrees to the road and when the plane had passed you could clearly see the crosshair, I think this is there to show that Roger Thornhill was in a substantial amount of danger. Different types of camera shots are used throughout the film to give an impression to the viewer about the character. Low shots are used frequently, for example when the two Russian henchmen the camera shot are taking Thornhill away the camera starts off low looking up at them.
This gives the impression to the viewer that these men are powerful, dominative and aggressive. A low angle camera shot is also used when Thornhill is hanging for his life from the four heads, one of Van Damm’s agents has his foot on his hand, the camera shot is looking from the foot up to the henchman giving the impression again that he is powerful, dominative and in control of the situation. Another type of camera shot is a point of view shot to look at things from the characters perspective or ‘point of view’.
An example of this is when Roger Thornhill is about to get punched in the woods when meeting up with Eve, this makes the situation seem more dramatic and eventful than just looking at it from a normal camera shot. High angled camera shots are used in North by Northwest, when Thornhill is running from the UN building the camera shot is looking down the side of the building from the very top with parallel lines running across the building to show that maybe sinister events are taking place within.
The high angles camera shot makes the character look very small in a large world as if he’s week and helpless. A wide shot is used to emphasize vulnerability for example when the crop plane is swooping in on Roger Thornhill the wide shot makes him look more vulnerable which also creates suspense and entraps the viewer to keep on viewing.

Still, all of these diversions pale beside the apparent true crime tale concerning the unpleasant salesman (Raymond Burr) with an angry invalid wife, who, heralded only by the sound of a breaking glass and a stifled scream, suddenly disappears.
Even as a temporary invalid himself, Jeff should have other distractions – like a girlfriend, 30 times as lovely as Miss Torso and introduced in one of the most famously provocative kissing scenes in movie history, Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly). Lisa is so sweet-natured, so unspeakably beautiful, and extraordinarily bright and sophisticated that poor, middle-aged Jefferies is certain that things can’t possibly work out. Of course, he’s behaving like a jerk, and so is he is constantly reminded by Stella (Thelma Ritter) the lovable, tart-tongued nurse provided by the insurance company to take care of him at home. (At times, 1955 seems like a lost utopia.) Still, as the salesmen starts making a number of unexplained trips with his metal suitcase, and a neighborhood dog starts digging at something underneath a flower bed, Jeff slowly persuades both the habitually critical Stella and the correctly aggrieved Lisa that something really is going on, though his policeman former war buddy (Wendell Corey) tries to discourage all this dangerous amateur sleuthing. Maybe the salesman’s wife really did just take a trip to country – though it’s probably Shakespeare’s “undiscovered country,” from which there is no return.
The primary theme here is, of course, voyeurism, but that’s so self evident and so widely commented upon by everyone who has ever discussed “Rear Window” that it hardly seems worth mentioning at this point when, more than ever, voyeurism is a multibillion dollar industry. Besides, Jon Michael Hayes’s sparkling dialogue says most of what needs to be said far better than I could. “We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change,” the crank but smart Stella opines, offering advice that should be presented before every episode of “Big Brother.” In any case, the real statement of any Hitchcock film is never in the words. They are about feelings and ideas that cannot be expressed verbally – though guys like me will never stop trying.

The way he maneuvers the camera, going from one end of the room to the other, from one conversation to the other, or not having the camera move at all, observing people from a distance, there are numerous times while watching it feels as if your standing right there in the apartment. Like all his films, it’s damn near impossible to take your eyes off the screen for a mere second, and again I reiterate how he crafted a gripping story with such a limited setting with ease. I can count on my hand the number of directors who can pull off such a thing, and still nobody comes close to what Hitchcock achieved when he worked with such a setting.
Rope was adapted from a play which was loosely based on the real life case of Leopold and Loeb, two college students who murdered a 14 year old in 1924 just for the thrill of it. Leopold and Loeb were gay, and it’s been assumed that Brandon and Phillip were lovers in the film as well. It’s been said that Hitchcock intended for the two to be gay, although this could never actually be said or shown on screen in 1948 with the production code and all. I believe Hitchcock even had to have the script supervised by some studio higher up‘s due to the rumors of there being two gay characters. The words “gay” or “homosexuality” were never uttered on the set, instead they were replaced with “it”. There’s been a lot made of the so called homosexual undertones in the film, and there’s differences of opinion when it comes to that aspect. Whatever the nature of Brandon and Phillip’s relationship is, Brandon is obviously the dominant one, as it’s quite clear that Phillip acts as his footstool. I’ve always thought all of it was just like looking for the times when Hitchcock ended a take, these things might go right over your head on account of being too wrapped up in the story.
Rope was second “limited setting” film Hitchcock did, along with the aforementioned Lifeboat (1944), Dial M For Murder (1954), and of course Rear Window (1954), which also starred James Stewart, the second film he and Hitchcock would collaborate on (Rope was the first time the two worked together). They did two more films together, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertigo (1958). All masterpieces, needless to say.

The marriage theme is also evident with the young newlywed couple whose sexual activity behind closed shades seems to be never ending, and apparently exhausting for the young man. We also see Miss Lonely Heart who sadly pretends one evening to have a male suitor for dinner. When she finally gets the courage to go out and meet a man, he turns out to be a creep who quickly attempts to force himself on her. And of course, there are the Thorwald’s whose marriage disintegrates into murder.
Jeffries broken leg sidelines him from any kind of activity, sexual or otherwise. He makes up for his inadequacy with the constant use of binoculars and a long telephoto lens he uses to spy on his neighbors. The camera and lens rest in his lap ‘rising’ when needed providing him with a sense of potency lacking while stuck in a wheelchair. Still, this feeling of power can only go so far. Later, when Lisa goes across the courtyard and enters the Thorwald’s apartment in search of evidence, Jeffries is completely helpless, impotent to warn her of the danger that soon arises; Thorwald coming home. Toward the conclusion of the film Jeffries is helpless again when Thorwald invades his apartment and almost kills him.
Jeffries courtyard view can be seen as one large big screen TV with him channel surfing between each window, a separate story going on in each one; the struggling songwriter, Miss Lonely Heart, Miss Torso, the married couple who sleep out on the fire escape to relieve themselves of their apartment’s oppressive heat and the Thorwald’s. At first Lisa is repelled by Jeffries spying on the private moments in his neighbors’ lives but as she becomes more convinced that Thorwald murdered his wife, possibly chopping her up into body parts, a look of sexual tension builds in her eyes and face. She has become visually stimulated, “turned on” by it all to the extent that in an attempt to uncover evidence on Thorwald as a murderer she crosses over from viewer to participant when she goes down to the courtyard, climbs up the fire escape and enters Thorwald’s apartment looking for some confirmation of the murder.

When Montag witnesses the death of an ageing woman (Bee Duffell) who chooses to die between her books, rather than give them up, he starts to question his blind obedience to the suppressive state. Montag becomes an avid reader, and as he learns about the hidden truths on the pages he worked so hard to destroy before, he sets out to preserve them.
Ray Bradbury’s dystopian society of Fahrenheit 451 is brought to life in Truffaut’s film through repetitive visual cues that strengthen his objection to a totalitarian regime. Throughout the movie there is a juxtaposition of the modernist architecture infiltrating traditional architecture and natural landscapes. In the city (Truffaut and Director of Photography, Nicholas Roeg, filmed in the modernist Alton estate in Roehampton, South London and in Edgcombe Park, Berkshire, where Montag’s house is located) the viewer is confronted with concrete buildings. These structures are concerned more with the functional value rather than an aesthetic form. They promote the ideas of sameness as many structures tend to look alike with their dominant neutrality.
Each building becomes an extension of the other, stamping out any individualistic flair that would have painted the city as anything other than uniform. As we move outward into the country, we can see the concrete arm of the totalitarian government, reaching out into the countryside through the railway sprawling out from the city centre. Here, in the presence of nature, sits the brutally present monorail (filmed in Châteauneuf sur Loire, France) cutting through the countryside, rising above the trees; marking its control with such a force that it cannot go unnoticed. This suspended monorail, 1370 metres long and built in 1959 by engineering firm SAFEGE, then seemed to be the future of public transport. This was why Truffaut wanted to include it in his film, as one of few futuristic elements. Later the monorail project, originally planned to connect the Parisian suburbs with the city centre, was abandoned due to technical and financial difficulties.
Modernist architecture is noted for its elimination of ornament and simplification of form. An outcome of modernist architecture is that it produced large housing estates with many buildings built internally and externally uniform. The central vision of many Modernist estates was to produce easily reproducible identical living units which would satisfy and reproduce communities ravaged and displaced from their terraced estates, destroyed in WW II.

The sequence is a bit like a Hitchcock version of Eisenstein’s Odessa steps, but, as Raymond Durgnat has noticed, it also has things in common with Joris Ivens’s documentary Rain (1929). A tight close-up shows the victim staring openmouthed at the camera, his face shattered by the bullet; next comes one of the most sinister and witty images of the director’s career: from a bird’s-eye vantage, we see the escaping killer scurrying like a rat through a dense crowd of people holding black umbrellas, some of which bob and sway, marking his path. Johnny’s pursuit of the killer through the ensuing chaos, in which an innocent cyclist dies, is edited with superb lucidity and leads to a dangerous car chase that also serves as a meet-cute reunion between Johnny and Carol Fisher. When the killer’s car mysteriously disappears, we find ourselves in quiet, open country. As usual in Hitchcock’s thrillers, the locale has a picture-postcard quality: Holland is famous for its windmills, so they are not only shown to us but also worked into the plot by means of a running gag—a lost bowler hat, which leads to the discovery of a MacGuffin (“Clause 27”) and a conspiracy to start a war.
The Rembrandt Square set was the largest of seventy-eight constructed for the film, consisting of a full-scale replica of the town hall; twenty-six broad steps leading up to the building; a wide cobblestone plaza; a street big enough to accommodate trams, cyclists, automobiles, and pedestrians; and the most elaborate rain-effects system yet built in Hollywood. The supervising art director was Alexander Golitzen, but most of the design work was probably done by his assistant, Richard Irvine, and by the legendary production designer William Cameron Menzies (also on loan from Selznick), who is given a special credit for visual effects in Foreign Correspondent. Menzies designed sets and camera angles for scores of films, ranging from Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad (1924) to Selznick’s Gone with the Wind (1939). His influence can be seen here in the Piranesi-like interior of the windmill, with its dark spiral staircase and menacing gears, and especially in the remarkable climactic scenes, when a transoceanic airliner carrying the leading characters is shot down, presumably by the Germans, and crashes into the sea.

Hitchcock expertly builds suspense, not just in terms of the murder sequences, but throughout the entire movie, first as Marion Crane steals her boss' money and tries to make a getaway, and then after she is killed, as Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) tries to evade capture by investigating parties, and of course, protect his mother. That the film successfully transfers its sympathies from the "main character" to Bates is a testament to Joseph Stefano's script, especially since the sinister undercurrent that runs under each scene only builds more and more intensely to a fever pitch by the film's conclusion.
Hitchcock, of course, seemed to instantly and intuitively understand certain aspects of human psychology, particularly in terms of audience manipulation and thematic reinforcement, and 'Psycho' is seeded with subtle but undeniable details that intensify the emotional and thematic dynamics of the story. For example, in the opening scene between Marion and her lover, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), she is undressed – admittedly provocatively – but in white, indicating her purity, at the very least, of intent. After she steals the money, however, she's next seen in a black brassiere and slip – a cue that she is no longer the wholesome young woman who simply wants to get away and marry the man she loves. The fact that her murder comes right after she basically decides to return the money is a sort of plot twist in that she is never given a chance to atone for her crime, and is instead punished for it.
The stylization of the dialogue may be a byproduct of the decidedly more melodramatic tone of movies at the time in which 'Psycho' was made, but it also works to intensify the suspense in the story. Marion is probably the worst offender, acting standoffish to a police officer and then basically arousing suspicion in any-and-everyone she meets by being impatient and vaguely rude in almost all of her conversations. But when Sam and Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) visit the Bates Motel to investigate her disappearance, their motives seem conspicuous and obvious as they attempt clumsily to confront Norman about his knowledge of Marion and the money she stole.
Finally, Hitchcock's direction in the film is nothing short of brilliant.