Tuesday's With Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock has been known for his stunning use of color, camera techniques, and sound, throughout all of his major motion pictures. Each of Hitchcock's films express how the studious of the day were operating. Whether the studious demanded rapid output of B pictures or prolonged work on an A film. Hitchcock could do both and usually would be able to turn out great work no matter the time frame or budget. The simple act of looking out of a window and viewing what is out there is taken to the extreme in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. The main character L.B. Jefferies, a photojournalist, is confined to a wheelchair because of a broken leg. His situation allows for him to spend most of his waking hours peering out into the courtyard of his Manhattan apartment building. Through Jefferies, the viewer experiences what it is like to be a "peeping-tom". By doing this Hitchcock reveals that no matter how morally wrong we may think it is, as humans it is our nature to wondering about others' private lives. Alfred Hitchcock also displays his natural production/direction techniques in Dial M for Murder. Dial M for Murder creates a sense of suspense by continuously changing the outcome of the story line. The husband Tony, played by Ray Milland, has hired a man to kill his wife because of her infidelity and because he is the sole benefactor of her will. When the plan goes wrong and Margot, played by Grace Kelley, ends up killing the man her husband hired, Tony must convince the police that Margot planned on killing this man because he was trying to blackmail her. Through these two films Hitchcock comments on the aspect of gender, voyeurism, and displays how time/cost saving techniques led him to be a well sought after producer/director.

Hitchcock creates a feeling of isolation and loneliness in Rear Window by his little use of sound throughout the film. Stefan Sharfe states that, "... 35 percent of Rear Window is totally silent, and an additional 15 percent can be considered semi-silent, ..." (Sharfe 179). Hitchcock gives homage to the earlier silent films because of the true cinematic style that is needed to portray feelings with just the use of camera movements and angles. The little use of non-diagetic sound gives the audience the feeling of actually sitting next to Jefferies and absorbing what he sees. From the viewers perspective, "We see (Jefferies) suffer while hear the world humming away indifferently." (Fawell 120). The use of diagetic sounds such as the Thorwald's fighting or the composer playing the piano also adds to the feeling of being right there in the scene, emphasizing the incorporation of the viewer as a voyeur.

In the third shot of the sequence the viewer is introduced to the voyeuristic aspect that Jefferies has throughout the sequence and the rest of the film. The fact that the camera is in the same position every time we see Jefferies shows that each shot of him could have been completed in a rapid order. Every other shot is a medium close up, with a short focal length, of Jefferies staring out of his windows into the vast number of people's apartments in his neighborhood. Since every shot of Jefferies is one of him looking at something out of his window, the following shot is an eyeline match of what he is looking at. The fact that the camera is in the same position every time we see Jefferies, shows that each shot of him could have been completed in a rapid order. Jefferies does not talk throughout this entire sequence so there would have to be no retakes do to misspoken lines. He does not move except to readjust himself in his wheelchair so this requires no camera movement, or lighting changes. The overall time it would of taken to shoot these scenes is drastically shorter then if the script required camera movement or action shots. This saved Hitchcock from high production costs.

Hitchcock's major cost saving technique was to confine the majority of each movie to one setting. Jefferies Manhattan apartment served this purpose for Rear Window. There are very few sets that are required to make this entire movie. For the most of this movie there are only two settings, Jefferies apartment and the buildings across the courtyard. These sets are the main focus of the movie so I imagine the lot at which these were created allowed for the shooting to take place in a very close, centralized, area. Cast and crewmembers would not have to travel far or set up a multitude of scenes to create the movie. Plus the use of only a few locations allows the viewer to share the feelings of Jefferies as he is trapped in a wheelchair in his apartment. Brog writes in his review for Rear Window, for Variety, "Hitchcock confines all of the action to the single setting and draws nerves to the snapping point in developing the thriller phases of the plot." (Variety August 1954) Hitchcock also uses Grace Kelly as Jefferies girlfriend. Kelly had just worked with Hitchcock on Dial M for Murder so he must have been able to easily direct her due to the consistent interactions over the past few months. Tony and Margot's London apartment is the main setting for Dial M for Murder which Brog also discusses, "The scene rarely shifts from the Milland-Kelly apartment and it is within the confines of its walls that the principals talk out the story action." (Variety May 1954) The use of mainly one set for each of these pictures allows Hitchcock to have a single camera without much movement. This significantly cuts down on time and money and follows Hitchcock's style of letting the dialogue and camera angles create suspense without having to change the setting. Hitchcock is known for creating suspense out of minimal sets. He uses this to his advantage when creating these two films.

Voyeurism is the main theme that runs throughout Rear Window and that theme goes beyond the norm to integrate the viewer as a voyeur. Robert Kapsis wrote, "When critics brought up the issue of voyeurism and Peeping Tomism, it was as if the viewer inscribed in the film was sexless, subject to the voyeuristic instinct in all of us. After all isn't that what attracts us to the cinema in the first place? "(Kapsis 148) Kapsis forefronts the real reason for going to see a film by stating that we are just watching some else's life on screen. The simple act of any movie is to peer into a world not our own. Hitchcock emphasizes this by using Jefferies as the gateway to the viewers true wants. Jefferies himself is boring and even depressed so that the viewer is not interested in him at all and is only worried about what he has to look at. Robert Stam explains, "The mechanism of gratification in the cinema, according to Metz, "rests on our knowing that the object being looked at does not know it is being looked at."1 Rear Window constantly