Essay Opening Shot Analysis of Rear Window

The most important of any story is the beginning, it's the hook to all movies, TV shows and books this is the way the author or director is setting the stage. In “Rear Window” and “Psycho” the beginning for both the books and movies are completely different. Psycho begins with Marion and her boyfriend Sam just sleeping together and she’s getting dress for work. Her and Sam have a talk about their future together; he tells her it's not very comfortable where he lives. He's in a lot of debt with the hardware store plus the alimony he’s forced to pay to his ex-wife and until he gets out of it, he chooses not to marry her. She goes to work at the real estate office and there's a high roller who comes to put a 40,000 down payment on a house for his daughter as a wedding present. She steals

After this, the shot pans along the road, and turns into a shot of police cars storming down the street. The fact that the street name, which serves as an embodiment of Norma and all associated with her, is so low to the ground emphasizes that the images of grandeur often associated with Hollywood are a facade, and that the true Hollywood is dark and grim, like a dirty street curb. The street pictured is dirty and unkempt, with weeds peeking out the cracks and piles of loose garbage and leaves strewn all over. This image serves as a stark contrast to the typical impressions people have of Hollywood, and reinforces that the true Hollywood is not the one seen so often on the big screen. Rather than opening with a scene showing off Hollywood’s magnificence, Wilder exposes to the audience what the “real” Hollywood is: a degenerate place full of misery and squalor. Moreover, opening scenes tend to set the tone of the movie, and leave lasting impressions the audience that carry through the entirety of watching. By showcasing the dark side of Hollywood before anything else, Wilder asserts that it is this dark, twisted version of the city that truly defines its inhabitants. In addition to pan shots, Wilder also incorporates music in the opening scene, which further adds to the dark image being relayed about Hollywood. The score is borderline cacophony, trademarked by sharp bursts of drums and trumpet that build suspense and

In Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” Jefferies apartment is the sole viewpoint to the outside world for the audience. We rarely see anything that isn’t from Jefferies immediate surroundings or directly from his point of view. This gives Jefferies, and in turn the viewers, a detached sense of realism from the world of the apartment complex opposite. This detachment is apparent to throughout the movie as many characters state to Jefferies that what he’s doing is morally wrong. However, the line of moral and immoral conduct is pushed as Jefferies continues to watch his neighbours and ultimately becomes directly involved in the plot which he had

Everything in the frame is in focus, which in a cinema viewing is a lot to take in, especially considering the films aspect ratio of 1.85:1. However, the audiences’ eyes are cleverly guided around the frame by almost unnaturally loud sounds, some of which are accentuated in post-production by Tati. The sounds against the floors create a reverbing echo, highlighting the absurd impracticality of the building. A man and a woman sit in the bottom left hand corner of the frame in what appears to be a waiting area. They are dressed identically in their monotonous grey colours, as if they are enslaved to the colours surrounding them. During the shot’s beginning, the audience is drawn to the nuns and their rhythmic footsteps as they enter the frame. Then, through a combination of actor gestures and dialogue, this gaze shifts to the two characters anchored in the foreground of the image. The rattling of a table being wheeled out by a man in white into the frame moves our eyes, as well as the couples own attention, to

The camera follows the elders of the block, Da’ Mayor and Mother Sister, as they talk in her bedroom. For a rare moment in the film Da’ Mayor’s and Mother Sister’s eyes are at exactly the same level, showing that as different as the two may have seemed, they are very much the same. Then the camera slowly pulls out as the two stand and sluggishly walk down a hallway toward a window. Now, where a director would typically have to cut and setup a new shot, Lee pulls the camera straight out of the window as Mother Sister and Da’ Mayor survey the block. The audience would expect to see next exactly what Da’ Mayor and Mother Sister are looking at, but instead Lee quickly pans over in the opposite direction to reveal Mookie standing in the street bellow. By doing this Lee makes a connection that both the elders and Mookie are, in the words of Mother Sister, “still standing.” The shot is not particularly tight but still has a cramped feel due to the clutter of things in the background, the heavy shadowing, and the red tint on the lighting. The red lighting gives sense of volatility to the shot, which is contrasted by the slow camera and character movements. These slow movements are analogous to the block as, regardless of how slowly, it too will go on and life will continue. This shot is in the tradition of mise en scene advocates like Bazin in that,

Rear Window is compelling, clever, and utterly original. Hitchcock helps us share this obsessive curiosity, and draw our conclusions directly parallel to the characters in the film. The unique montage of imagery helps define our characters, and expose their vulnerability, their identity, and their own self-discovery

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, L.B. Jeffries, played by Jimmy Stewart, becomes completely obsessed with spending all of his waking hours watching his neighbors from his wheelchair. He even uses a camera to better his view and thus enhances his role as both a spectator and a voyeur. This contributes to the creation of a movie being played right outside Jeffries’ window. In this “movie within the movie” his neighbors’ lives become the subject for the plot. Each window represents a different film screen, each which is focused upon only when Jeffries directs his attention to it. He witnesses both the anxieties associated with the beginning of a marriage and the heartache of relationships ending. The

The film Rear Window, released in 1954, and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, portrays the shift of power in the relationship between the central characters of Lisa Freemont and L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries throughout the film. As the characters are introduced in the beginning of the film, Jeffries is shown to have control of the relationship between himself and Miss Freemont, the power later shifts to Lisa as the film progresses and she takes an interest in the suspected murder. However, the film ends with relative equality within the relationship, after Lisa's intelligence is discovered by her partner.

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

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film “Rear Window” demonstrated a suspenseful and terrifying storyline, which captured the attention of a variety of audiences. The film focuses on James Stuart (Jeff) and ultimately his neighbors who live around him. Stuart is crippled from the beginning of the movie and is unable to leave his apartment. Due to his immobility, he remains confined in his home with a broken leg and begins to watch his neighbor’s particular behaviors and routines. The film progresses into drama and suspense that is seen through music, lighting, film editing processing and extensive detail to the neighborhood being watched. Rear Window exhibits these details in the scene where Grace Kelly who plays the role of Lisa, attempts to

In addition to camera movements, he uses camera distances and framing to create images that make the audience feel cheerful. When he frames a shot, if it takes place outside, there is ample amount of bountiful nature within the frame. The most prominent example of this is toward the end of the film when the narrator is describing the after effects of the massive storm. It is a medium close up but the narrator is only in a small portion of the frame, the rest if a

The first instance of window imagery is deceivingly small and easy to pass over, but upon reflection it creates a certain symmetry by subtly foreshadowing the final window scene. In the very opening section of the book, Clarissa’s departure from the house dredges up memories of her time at Bourton, of scenes with Peter Walsh that took place in front of an open window. This memory, brought about by the impact of the early morning air, also reminds her of the “solemn” feeling this incident gave her “standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen.” Though fleeting and lightly discussed, this emotion placed so close to the beginning of the novel seems to indicate the dangerous nature of an open window, which anticipates both Septimus’ death and Clarissa’s later musings in front of a window.

Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller ‘Rear Window’ (Hitchcock, 1954) begins with the immediate use of mise-en-scène in order to establish a sense of atmosphere, equilibrium and the mundane, soon to be disrupted as the events of the film unfold and are observed through the eyes of the voyeuristic protagonist, Jeff. Setting, cinematography and various other expressive mise-en-scène techniques work together to influence the overall appearance of the film. Though, by taking a closer look, these techniques reveal the significance of the narrative and characters. In the opening sequence, Hitchcock’s original visual style provides signposts for the audience to recognize what will be significant in the future: instead of establishing what is only happening in the moment in time; mise-en-scène is used to suggest what is to come. This arrangement of the “Classical Hollywood” narrative - starting with the setting and characters in a state equilibrium - acts as a seemingly all-purpose, archetypal opening by establishing location and introducing character. Simultaneously we can see that this sequence is vastly different from the rest of the film: it is leading the viewer into a false sense of security – the calm before the storm – as Jeff soon happens to piece together information leading to the possibility that one of his neighbors murdered their wife. This sequence is one of the only moments in the film we see things the protagonist does not, thus this carefully constructed opening is preparing

By a series of slow, drawn out zoom-ins, the viewer is 'tuned out' to how far moved in as compared to the original frame. It would be easy to see this change in a quick zoom, however, Snow's patience and dedication to his work plays a trick on the viewers' eyes. To show us just how much we have zoomed in since the film's beginning, Snow gives us a shot of the man originally dying in the apartment and begin slowly zooming again. This shot wakes us up to show us how much these zooms have numbed our perception to what has happened in context of the apartment. We are forced to question how much has happened outside the frame and in how long. Thus, through the use of panning, Michael Snow has once again to consider the powers and limits of time and

The next shot is a low-angle long shot of a man sitting on the edge of a building. The man jumps down and exits the frame for a few seconds, foreshadowing his next, more permanent jump. The camera tilts down and pans left to put the man in the center frame of medium long shot. The camera pans left again to follow the man closer to the edge of the building, it is now behind the man. The camera dollies out when he sits on the edge, and dollies in after the angel comes up behind him. Next is a static long shot of two people behind fences, waving at the man. The next shot shows the man jumping off, and Cassiel exiting the frame left, leaving only an empty shot of the city and of a flock of birds. The absence where there used to be somebody is a punctum; a shot of the city, which would have been studium, is made piercing by a man jumping off and leaving behind nothing. Then, there a few shots that are in colour, to signify that they are from a human’s point of view. A shot of the city, with a golden angel statue at the center, drains off of any colour, to signify a return to an angel’s point of view. The montage that follows uses handheld camera in certain shots, for example in the shot after Cassiel jumps off of the angel statue, the camera feels as though it is falling, and that the shot is from Cassiel’s point of view. In the shots of the montage where the camera is handheld, the movement of the camera confuses and blurs the