Power Shift In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

The Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock is a very interesting movie, once you start to watch the movie you are pulled into the curiosity of L.B. Jefferies’ voyeuristic antics as he spends the majority of the film watching his neighbor’s actions and everyday life at home. This emersion that we get drawn into with Jefferies antics, we almost feel guilty for watch him watch his neighbors which is the intended purpose. Voyeurism will has always had a social taboo feeling, throughout this movie Hitchcock portrays the curious nature of human voyeurism.

While at the hospital, she had flashbacks of the whole ordeal, and her professor asking her to have sex with him again. She also had sex with a guy name Toby. She met Toby at a party and they had sex the same night. Than one day when Toby came to visit Susanna at the hospital, they had sex and then she tried to have sex with a guy name John who works at the hospital. At times she felt guilty and regretful. At the hospital she met a girl name Lisa who was a sociopath. Lisa was a trouble maker, on numerous occasions she escaped and came back. So one time Lisa and Susanna decided to escape and met a girl name Daisy, who was a former patient at the hospital. While at Daisy’s place, Lisa was blunt about what she thought of Daisy, which caused Daisy to commit suicide. Susanna felt, she could have possibly saved Daisy’s life, if she had stopped Lisa from criticizing Daisy’s way of living. She tried to blame her self for the Daisy’s death.

In this essay, I shall try to illustrate whether analysing the movie Rear Window as a classical example of the Freudian concept of voyeurism, is appropriate. Voyeurism is defined in The Penguin dictionary of psychology as:

The opening scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window essentially acts as one long establishing shot — only rather than establishing just the location of a scene, it establishes the entire film in more ways than one. One particularly important shot in the scene, beginning 00:02:36 into the film, tells the audience much of what it will need to know about Rear Window’s setting, characters, and themes.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a uniquely captivating film that is an exemplary style of cinematic craftsmanship. Reaching into the minds of the characters, as well as the audience, Alfred Hitchcock is the master at utilizing the juxtaposition of images to bring us into the minds of the characters. In Rear Window, the story is so distinctively executed that it allows us to relate to our own curiosities, question our identities, and ponder our closest relationships. What is happening on the screen is merely a projection of our own anxieties, our own existence, and our self-ambiguity as portrayed by the characters in this wonderful film.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film Rear Window, a photographer named L.B. Jefferies is forced to spend the entirety of his time in his apartment after an accident has left him stuck in a wheelchair. To pass the hours of free time he now has, he decides to spend it all looking out his window, overlooking his neighbors and peeking into their business. Throughout the movie, Jefferies takes interests in a large array of characters ranging from a newly-wed couple in their new home, to a bachelor musician who is always having parties, to anything in between. None, however, catch the attention of Jefferies quite as much as man across the way known as Lars Thorwald.

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

Jeffries realises Lisa is more than just beautiful when she expresses her insightful theories about Laars and his wife, things Jeffries would never have thought of, himself. Lisa contributes "Women don't keep their jewellery in a purse, all tangled... A woman going anywhere but the hospital would always take makeup, perfume and jewellery." Detective Doyle dismisses Lisa's ideas as "feminine intuition" and therefore a waste of his time, however Jeffies sticks by his girlfriend. Lisa comes over to Jeffries apartment unannounced with the intention of "staying the night [t]here, uninvited." This was much frowned upon in conservative, fifties society, especially for someone of Lisa's status, however she doesn't seem to much care, she has her own mind. Jeffries admires Lisa's bravery as she drops off the note at Laars' apartment, something he would have done if he was able. She gets back, glowing with excitement and the look on Jeffries face could only be described as adoration. The power in the relationship shifts to Lisa when Lisa expresses her intelligence and

Sitting alone trapped inside my home watching my neighbors. This setting is a description of the plot in the films Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock (1954) and Disturbia by D.J Carusso(2007).These two films contain many similar themes which are a part of the movie’s plot but are slightly different. The two films both contain a vast amount of voyeurism presented in different ways. In both films women are treated rude, disrespectfully and are victims of violence. Both films also share the theme of Isolationism which contributes to the plot, tone and development of characters. The films are so alike in comparison and little in contrast that it would lead you to believe that Disturbia is a modern remake of Rear window.

As the story goes on and she begins to believe Jeffries you sense that he is becoming more attracted to her. The first big change is when she comes over and creates a believable story for him. In the previous scene when they were kissing he wasn’t focused at all, but after she tells him the twisted story about the possible death of the neighbors he becomes intrigued by her and the kissing then becomes passionate.

For while the men are looking actively for the "smoking gun," the women are confronted with more subtle clues in spite of themselves and even try to hide from each other what they intuitively know. But they do not fool each other for long, as Glaspell describes, "Their eyes met - something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other" (295). However, they cannot pull away, for they are bound by a power they do not even comprehend: "We all go through the same things -  it's all just a different kind of the same thing!...why do you and I understand? Why do we know - what we know this minute?" (303). They do not realize that it is intuition they share, that causes them to "[see] into things, [to see] through a thing to something else...." (294). Though sympathetic to Minnie Wright, the women cannot deny the damning clues that lead them to the inescapable conclusion of her guilt.

She says multiple times that she can ‘Smell trouble’ in the apartment as she notices Jeff voristic habits. From a shot prospective, author John Belton points out an interesting fact about Stella visual role to show she know more about what is about to happen, “...narrative perspectives, such as those of Stella, Lisa, and Doyle, which initially differ from Jeff's in their refusal to believe him, ultimately give way to his perceptions, in large part because these characters are forced to share his spatial position, to see events from the single perspective which is his own. For Jeff, trapped at a fixed station point, there is only one possible way of interpreting what he has heard and seen; his stubborn and herence to his reading of events is partially understood in terms of his immobilization in space, which prohibits him, unlike the other characters, from gaining other

Alfred Hitchcock’s mystery film Rear Window based on the Cornell Woolrich short story introduces the characters of L.B. Jeffries, and Lisa Freemont. L.B. Jeffries is an adventurous photographer who takes action shots. Lisa Freemont is a high class woman who is a fashion designer and very prim and proper. What Hitchcock shows in this film is that men and women will take drastic measures to change when seeking approval from a love interest. Lisa’s initial beliefs are that she wants to get married to Jeffries and have him be a fashion photographer.

Trying to prove her love to him, going so far by putting herself in harm's way just to get him to notice her existence. In essence, this is the major point in Mulveys thesis as the male gaze reduces a woman to nothing but an object of desire. In this case, Jeffries has reduced Lisa into nothing but a object of his own desires after watching her from afar and only because he

Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart), P.I, is hired by the rich General Sternwood to out a blackmailer, but quickly finds himself tangled in the Sternwood family’s dirty laundry — it’s the classic film noir narrative. At the center of it all seems to be Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), a Sternwood daughter, and the woman attempting to cover up the murder at the bottom of Marlowe’s case. I used Vivian’s tidy adherence to the femme fatale archetype to dig deeper into its true message about women’s nature, beyond the mysterious façade.