Comparing Hitchcock's Rear Window And The Birds

it is the start of the story. The window fills the whole frame of the

In Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic thriller Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart stars as L.B. Jeffries, a world traveling magazine photographer accustomed to living a fast pace active lifestyle. When Jefferies injures himself taking a risky picture he is immobilized, confined to a wheelchair inside his apartment for two months. Bored with his uneventful life he becomes completely obsessed with the lives of his neighbors spending the majority of his waking hours watching them from his window. To obtain a better view he begins using a telescopic lens from one of his cameras. By watching his neighbors through the camera he assumes the role of both a spectator and a voyeur. This contributes to

Cinematic perception can be understood using the metaphor of cinema as a window and frame.  Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is an concrete example of this metaphor from both a critical viewpoint as an audience member, and from the perspective of the protagonist, L.B. Jefferies.  Thomas Elsaesser believes that the cinema of the window offers a “special, ocular access to an event” and the screen is transformed from a two dimensional narrative into a three-dimensional environment within which the audience is absorbed (14). Because the plot contains an actual window and also involves L.B Jefferies looking through a window, Rear Window is an exemplary illustration of this metaphor. The two observation points are similar in that they are both ocular-specular,

Symbolism is heavily demonstrated in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 'Rear Window ' and Question 's 2015 The Magic Circle. Both works have strengthened the idea that movie directors ' or game developers ' narrative forms can virtually implant a part of the audience into the works and have a direct impact on the interpretations of them by using symbols. Conversely, 'Rear Window ' and The Magic Circle have their own unique narrative techniques in order to call forth the symbols of each work. Even though these two works are from different media and roughly about sixty years apart, is it true that the differences allow one form of media with its narrative style to provide more meaningful and clear symbols than the other?

There are many different elements that identifies the film Rear Window as a Hitchcock film. First off, there are two obvious ones, which are having a blonde woman in the film, as well as an animal. There multiple blonde women in the film, such as Lisa and “Miss Torso”, as Jeff calls her. Jeff’s neighbors have a small dog as well. Additionally, another obvious element is there are stairs in the film.

The Birds film by Alfred Hitchcock has been notorious for being some people’s root cause for their fear of birds. It seems quite ridiculous to think about, a movie being the cause for a fear; it seems almost irrational if you haven’t experienced it yourself. Birds, however, should not be something that stirs fear into a person. If this film were to be remade in 2017 birds would not be my menace of choice. Maybe in the 60s when Horror movies were just starting to come out, it would have been horrifying, but this day and age people have grown up with scary movies, movies that include bloods, guts, suspense, and jump scenes. The Birds is rated PG compared to movies like The Human centipede, Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, or The Shining. Instead of birds I would choose a disease as my menace of choice in the remake of this movie.

When reading the story, you learn that Hal Jeffries can’t get around very well, “I could get from the window to the bed, and from the bed to the window, and that was all” (Woolrich 67). Since he was used to getting more exercise than he is getting now he was restless and needed something to do, watching people seemed to be idealistic since reading books wasn’t his thing. “I suppose it was a little bit like prying, could even have been mistake for the fevered concentration of a Peeping Tom.

In general, “North by Northwest” offers tension in proximately every scene as travel with Roger Thornhill in his escapade. Director Alfred Hitchcock captures

Rear Window was produced by Paramount Studios and is directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Rear Window was filmed in 1954 and IMBD gives the movie a rating of

From the very first shot of the film we are introduced to the lives of not only the main character, Jeff, but his fellow neighbors as well. Jeff is a successful photographer who is bound to only his apartment because of a broken leg. The story that unfolds between him and his girlfriend, Lisa, intertwines itself in the murder of a women across the courtyard. Jeff’s ongoing entertainment of the lives of others rather than face his own difficulties is solved when he bands together with Lisa to prove that the women, Mrs. Thorwald, was murdered by her husband. The story tackles a major theme of spectatorship through the restraint of Jeff’s point of view. When we look into the windows of each apartment to seeing the murder happen through his sleepless eyes, we are only allowed to see what Jeff sees. This theme adds so much depth to the film because it arises the questions of how accurate is one’s own perspective? By being a spectator to the story along with Jeff we feel and understand his desires, and the consequences he faces when trying to solve what happened. This notion brings to light the first narrative we are introduced to which is the many apartments Jeff spies on. Inside their apartments the many stories are played out as if Jeff was the camera man (Cowie). This sense of voyeurism we experience from Jeff’s eyes makes every different story seem related to the main plot weather it’s the newlyweds, the attractive ballerina, or the woman seeking love.

Voyeurism and spectatorship are exemplified in Hitchcock’s film Rear Window from 1954. The film is focused around the situation of the main character, Jeff, looking through his binoculars into a woman’s apartment across from him. The film employs a powerful photographic lens with its use of cut shots that only show Jeff’s optical perspective.

Alfred Hitchcock is a director and artist in his own right as he needs little introduction to most moviegoers. His work as a creative entrepreneur during his time in the budding age of film has created a series of classics that continue to define a standard in crime, thriller and suspense cinema. As many early critics of film were skeptic of their authenticity as an art form, Hitchcock proceeded to build upon the groundwork set before him by exploring methods with which lured the audience into emotional involvement in film. Over time, his mastered technique often reflected in his plot developments as he proceeded to sway the interest, attention and opinion of his audience to his liking. Such manipulations would cause the audience to bend the rules of conventional morality. Such technique had been previously unparalleled and proceeds to be the standard of good film making today. Even in his early films such as The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock’s ability to evoke and conflict emotional attachments in his audience was quite apparent as it was not uncommon for a quintessential bad guy in his film to transition into a protagonist simply based on plot and character development as you cannot

Hitchcock’s thought about America according to David Lehman was “passionate, scary, fond, funny, and profound” (1). When we think of Hitchcock’s America in films certain emblematic moments rush to our mind: the shower scene, the breaking of merry-go-round at the Magic Isle amusement park, the crop-duster sequence, the menacing image of the birds on the telephone wire, the wheelchair bound photographer, the clash of the cymbals and the Mount Rushmore sequence. In the mythic landscape of Hitchcock’s America, the murderous and the perilous co-exists with the homely and the domestic. People are not what they claim to be in their charming facade (Lehman 5). Murders happen for the usual reasons-greed, ambition, jealousy, the desire to be rid

One might find interesting the initial state of the leading character, whose face is shown through a medium shot, sleeping on a wheelchair he is temporarily confined to; in terms of perspective, this is the only moment throughout the whole film in which the camera does not matches Jeffrey’s view. The viewers are provided with an autonomous

This question has baffled filmmakers and audiences for decades. There is no clear answer on why the birds started attacking. The only person who knows the real answer is Alfred Hitchcock himself. After doing some research on Alfred Hitchcock, I believe that Melanie is indeed the reason why the birds attacked. Alfred Hitchcock saw the actor of Melanie Daniels, Tippi Hedren as his muse and wouldn’t let any other person play the role. One can tell how obsessed he was with her since she was in almost in every single shot. He saw her and the character Melanie as weak and inferior and victimized both. Hitchcock wanted to make Melanie seem helpless against the bird attacks and as if she was the reason why the birds started attacking. When Melanie first came to Bodega Bay one could clearly tell that she wasn’t from there. She was dressed much more beautiful, than everybody else and also very feminine, which made her appear fragile and out of place. Bodega Bay is a very small town and as most small towns they do not like strangers, especially not strangers with a bad reputation like Melanie Davids. Rumors and assumptions spread rapidly in small towns like Bodega Bay. When she first arrived at Bodega Bay, the man inside of the store and at the water front were staring at here and giving her strange looks as if they couldn’t believe that such a woman would come to bodega bay and made the audience feel as if she wasn’t welcomed there. When Melanie came back from the Brenner residents