Throughout Hitchcock’s 1954 classic Rear Window (Paramount) L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) cast serves to confine him not only physically to the four walls of his apartment but mentally too, stuck in a world that consists only of the apartment windows seen in the courtyard from his Rear Window. Hitchcock effectively uses camera positions to show how the commonplace and ordinary life can evoke the dark side of life.
From the get-go Hitchcock is using an establishing shot consisting of the curtains drawing on Jeffries window giving the audience the first glisp at the courtyard that has not only become Jeff’s world while he’s been wearing the cast, yet the courtyard that has come to eclipse his life (CC). Within the first two minutes of the film the audience is seeing the tiny, seemingly normal courtyard; however, it also shows how that is Jeff’s only escape from the four walls of the apartment, easily identifying how the consistency of this ordinary life could soon turn dark (Semi). Immediately after the establishing shot Hitchcock uses two close-up shots going from an intensely sweating Jeffries to a rather high thermometer, though seemingly meaningless these close-up shots convey the ickiness and uncomfortability that is in the air because of the summer heat. The conveyances of the close-up shots are essential in showing how Jeff’s uncomfortability in the growing heat directly relates to his umcomfortability in his ordinary life.
After establishing the uncomfortablenessJeff feels within his present reality, this ordinary life he leads, Hitchcock showcases the reason Jeffries is stuck in it with a close-up shot of Jeffries’ broken camera. The very same camera he was using when the accident that caused him to break his leg happened, but the single shot of the broken camera is important to display how when the camera is broken, there is no darkness in Jeffries life (CC). At first the audience is introduced to the idea of a closer look at Thorwald (Raymond Burr), not initially by Jeff’s camera, but by Jeff’s use of binoculars. Hitchcock uses a medium shot of Stella (Thelma Ritter) in a power position over Jeffries (to signify she indeed had the power to stop his peeping but chose not to), handing him the binoculars with a zoom in to a close-up of Jeffries using said binoculars.
The binoculars are important in breaking the barrier for the audience of never seeing the other residents of the courtyard close-up; however, it is Jeff taking out his camera with the enormous telephoto lens that truly shows the audience the darkness of life he is about to enter. Using a medium shot outlined with the lens of the camera, Hitchcock shows Thorwald wrapping knives, which are the first weapons seen in the movie thus far. This signifying that Jeffries has broken the barrier between his ordinary life and the dark life that was always lurking under the surface with the introduction of his camera. Jeff uses his camera not only to confirm his suspicions of Thorwald but also to spy on others of the courtyard such as Miss Lonelyhearts (Judith Evelyn), showing a different kind of darkness brought out by ordinary life. Hitchcock once again using a medium shot framed by the lens of Jeffries camera displays Miss Lonelyhearts knocking back one drink after another with a handful of pills and writing a letter, it is only to be assumed that she is about to commit suicide. This shot through Jeff’s camera displays how the ordinariness of Miss Lonelyhearts love life has pushed her into a life so dark she believes that her only option is to end it.
What Hitchcock shows in this true thriller classic is a slow-driven, heart-pounding mystery that centers around something that all people are interested by: other people. This film will have you just as intrigued by the mystery as L.B. Jeffries himself is and make you feel as in danger as Jeffries himself is in.
