REAR WINDOW
1954
Alfred Hitchcock

112 minutes

Some terms:

Scopophilia: a drive to see (not with sexual implications of voyeurism)

Specularize: To make a spectacle out of something that the audience wants to see. Often a high point, climax or the appearance of the major theme of the genre will be specularized: e.g. ppearance of the monster in a monster movie, the viewing of gore in a slasher movie, the gunfight in a western are set pieces which may be specularized. One could say that specularization is the response to scopophilia!

Reflexivity: Something which operates back on itself. In grammar forms like “to wash one’s self” are reflexive. In theater and film, pieces which look at theater (either directly or indirectly) are said to be reflexive.

WHACK PART

First you need as idea (hard part). Then you need to develop it and support it.

You need to build a paper like a trial or a mystery solution. In Rear Window Jeffries has to convince B(D)oyle of what he suspects. How does Boyle destroy his arguments even if Jeffries is right. (In the films this goes on between Lisa and Jeffries as well)

Watch out for sentence fragments and run on sentences.

Sentences require a subject (understood in commands) and a main verb (agrees with subject) as a minimum.
Commands may be a single word “Look!” (subject “you” understood)
“He went” Anything without those two parts will be incomplete as a declarative sentence.

In art forms (not academic papers) it may be that one can "play" with the rules to make interesting artistic points, but this is generally avoided in technical writing.

“Father MacKenzie, writing the words to a sermon that no one will here……
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there!”

“Father MacKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave……
No one was saved.”

 When you first write an idea down as a sentence you are forced to deal with specific words. They can/may be rather jumbled which is fine as long as they let you remember what you were trying to say. In the rewrites they must become less and less jumbled and less and less ambiguous.

Some legal problems in interpretation of law for example, with distribution of adjectives. Do they distribute across a conjunction?

Do you want fired eggs and ham?
Are both the eggs and the ham fried?

How would you take “Do you want fried eggs and ice cream”? Doubtful you would want fried ice cream.

 What is the meaning of:

I was scheduled to teach a mini-course when we last spoke which would serve as the basis for the independent studies.

as opposed to

When we last spoke, I was scheduled to teach a mini-course on Scottish Films which would serve as a basis for the independent studies.

 Last time we talked about films from plays:

Plays lack cuts, changes in distance between subjects and audience (no close-ups), editing, the ability to have many locations and to focus attention in the same way films do. They can play with lighting and sound
Plays have element of “immediacy” of audience involvement apparent to actors. Often able to deal with less real appearance. Odd light changes in stage performance of South Pacific were mimicked by film with disastrous results.
Inherit the Wind makes use of many of these uniquely film techniques in the film. Deep focus (without rack focus) makes depth a function of time. Nay shots of Brady responding to things Hornbeck says and so on.
Film moves outdoors more dramatically (opening sequence), sequences when Brady arrives and when Drummond walks through carnival like atmosphere. The scene at the revival meeting feels very much like the play.
This time we are dealing with source material which is a short story rather than a play (or written directly for the screen as Third Man was).
The story is a first person narrative (What is first person?)
Little dialog in the story – how will that translate into a film?
What about the characters in the story?

WHAT IS THE PLOT WHAT IS THE THEME? How do you derive the "subtext" from the "text"?

The Film: Rear Window

Differences between story and film:

New characters appear, old ones vanish. Book has Sam, who morphs in part into Lisa and Stella in part.

Jeffries becomes photographer many images of photographing.

Dog is introduced in the story

Thorwald is armed in the story and killed while on the roof.

Flashbulbs are not used in the story to blind Thorwald momentarily.

Film reveals that his leg is broken first, rather than last

What necessitates this? IN part the lack of women in the original story. Women are extremely minor characters.

Need for conversation to explain his “intuitions and feelings” which are handled in first person narration in story. That much voice over could get boring.

Romance somewhat necessary for film

Opening Shot:

Very much reflexive: window shades raised mysteriously like theater curtain to reveal the view of the “rear window”.

Images of heat: sweat, thermometer, bright sunlight, people in summer clothes,

Images of Jeffries as photographer: action pictures he has taken, his camera, lenses and indication that his leg was broken by the car accident he photographed.

Getting a subtext

The subtext is always hinted at in someway by the text. Things in the plot imply a wider more universal message. There are many comments in the text about looking – “We’ve become a nation of peeping Tom’s” etc.

These are visual images of a kind of scopophila: the raising of the shades in the opening credits, Lisa’s lowering of the shades (with a statement that tonight’s performance is over” She shows him her night gown and says “Preview of coming attractions”

There is emphasis all through the film on looking (scopophilia)

As well as the idea that Jeffries is a photographer. In fact one conflict that he has with Lisa is his desire to photograph real life events whereas she would like him to be a fashion photographer of portrait photographer (somewhat detached from life).

Visually the set is constructed like a security desk with many screens on it. Each window is like a movie screen or television set one which one can watch other people’s lives. This is precisely what happens in movie theaters and on television. The film is reflexive in this aspect.