Alfred Hitchcock builds suspense whilst never leaving Jefferies apartment in “Rear Window”. the entire film is filled with events that create suspense, three in stand out: Thorwald removing items from his apartment in the very early morning hours, Thorwald walking in on Lisa as she is searching his apartment, and L.B. Jefferies waiting in his apartment as Thorwald tries to enter.
While Jefferies, or Jeff as Lisa calls him, is stuck in his apartment because of a broken leg, he has plenty of time to watch his neighbours. One rainy night in the early morning, Jeff notices Thorwald leaving his apartment with a large case. Thorwald soon returns and then leaves again with the case. He does this multiple times. We as an audience have only limited knowledge of what Thorwald is doing because we are confined to Jeff’s point of view. Hitchcock uses this point of view to build suspense. We are left with questions like “Where is Thorwald going so early in the morning?”, “What is in the case?”, and “Why is he making so many trips back and forth in the rain?”. Hitchcock has drawn us into partaking in his film
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Thorwald discovers Jeff spying on him while the police and Lisa are in Thorwald’s apartment. After the police leave with Lisa, Jeff loses track of Thorwald. This in itself builds suspense because we know that Thorwald has discovered Jeff spying on him and we don’t know where Thorwald is or what he is doing. Jeff’s phone rings. He answers and there is no sound on the other end of the line. This absence of sound builds even more suspense. Could it be Thorwald? Soon we hear the loud, deliberate footsteps of someone, almost certainly Thorwald, coming up the stairs to Jeff’s apartment. Next comes the sound of someone attempting to open the door. The audience is almost positive that it is Thorwald, but it could also be Lt. Doyle. The suspense climaxes when the door opens and Thorwald enters and begins to confront
Hitchcock utilizes sound, camera work, MacGuffins, and plot twists to tell the storylines of the movies. Hitchcock understood the importance of camera work and sound because he began his career making silent films.12 It is why he uses many close up shots so the audience can pay attention to specific details and the emotions on the character’s face. He does not rely on dialogue to tell the story. He uses sound to help convey the message of a scene.
Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock is a fillm full of symbolism and motifs that provides viewers with a bigger meaning. It shows these rhetorical appeals through Hitchcok’s eyes that would not be recognized if not analyzed. Through these appeals I have recognized the window as being a symbol and marriage and binoculars as motifs. After understanding much more than what the eye anitially sees when viewing this film there is a fine line between understanding what is going on in the film and observing what the protagonist Jeff is viewing.
These questions and others leave the movie open-ended and made the ending frustrating in an unappealing way. Due to the complicated plot, characters, and plot holes, “Vertigo” does not deserve the level of praise that it receives. However, if Hitchcock, had access to modern technology, like new cameras and CGI, perhaps many of these things would not be issues and “Vertigo” might be a more impressive
Alfred Hitchcock successfully performs suspense and shock in a number of ways. One way was when he reveals that the cop is following her, making us think that he found out concerning the money she stole. Another way is when we see Norman staring through the hole, examining her as if he is waiting to make his move. The last technique that Hitchcock constructed suspense is when we identify a shadowy character gazing at her take a shower, making us wonder who it could
Both of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, North by Northwest and Rear Window, were great movies with lots of suspense. The suspense, however, would not have been created without the entire mise-en-scene of the movies. Hitchcock was a master at using the elements of lighting, sound, and cinematography to heighten the suspense in his movies. The first key element of mise-en-scene that played a significant role in both movies was lighting.
Alfred Hitchcock, the film director commonly identified as “The Master of Suspense”, was once quoted as saying, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it”(“Alfred Hitchcock”). The name Hitchcock has continued to evoke a feeling of expectation for the macabre, as both his personality together with his films, played upon audience’s nerves. Hitchcock created narratives that had audiences waiting at the edge of their seats awaiting the crashing cymbals to hide an assassination during a concert in both the 1934 and 1956 films, The Man Who Knew Too Much, or bite their nails as the audience followed a child carrying a bomb through the city in the 1936 film Sabotage. Hitchcock’s legacy has remained powerfully tied to his life-long
After watching The 39 Steps (1935), I realized that Alfred Hitchcock really did have a talent for establishing suspense through films. Even though suspense was the primary focus, Hitchcock managed to effectively and intelligently mix humor, romance, and thriller. He uses a variety of techniques to convey these feelings to the audience. According, to some of his interviews with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock mentions his love for The 39 Steps, specifically about the techniques he uses to create a bewitching experience throughout the film. In this film, he uses a variety of themes that he continued to constantly use throughout his later films.
You then are learning the things about Mr. Thorwald along with Jefferies and all those who help him solve this murder case. There is then one scene where he questions the morality of peeping at people through his window the way he does. They feel this way after having doubts about their beliefs of Mr. Thorwald after detective Doyle does his best to prove them wrong. Doyle talks of how a simple situation can be taken way out of proportion by observing someone so closely in the way Jefferies
He then heard a new sound. It sounded like chains being dragged across the ground. His door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floor below, then coming up the stairs, then coming straight towards his living room door.
In the film Rear Window, the director, Alfred Hitchcock uses a variety of techniques to create suspense and leave viewers on the edge of their seats throughout the film. Hitchcock uses a good assortment of tempo to create thoughts in the viewer's mind. He slows down the pace to create anticipation, and speeds it up to show a change in intensity. In the ending scene of Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock uses changes in pace and tempo, lighting, and a short term deadline to constitute an immense atmosphere of suspense in the viewer's mind.
Since this is an act that most people have no problem partaking in on their day to day; i.e. “people watching”, the viewer finds it very easy to feel at-home in this role, and are able to sit back and watch the events of the film unfold. Only when our protagonist is caught, we are also forced to reassess our role, as we now feel all too uncomfortable in the face of reality. We are not used to being an active participant in a film, only a spectator. By connecting our role, and the role of Jeff so closely together, Hitchcock compels us to feel just as barefaced as Jeff when caught by Mr.Torwald. We are deer caught in headlights, paralyzed in the face of our
In a Panopticon, inspecting each individual’s movements at a single given moment is impossible owing to the tower containing far more inmates than observers. In Foucault’s words, “visibility is a trap.” If a viewer is engrossed in watching one inmate, another may be up to no good. In Rear Window, the most crucial moments Jeff needs to observe occurs when he is focusing his attention elsewhere. When Jeff is unable to view Mr. Thornwald, Thornwald murders his wife.
Here Hitchcock uses point of view shots for the protagonists Jeff, Lisa and Stella, while they look into the windows of Jeff’s neighbors, primarily that of Raymond Burr’s character Lars Thorwald. There is also a reverse shot which is also a P.O.V. from Lars’s perspective. One of the most iconic shots in this film is in fact a point of view shot wherein Jeff blasts light through the flash of his camera, which is intended to blind and impede Lars. This is in the point of view of Jeff and what it does is blind the audience for the few seconds that the flash goes off and contributes towards building both fear and tension as Lars gets closer and closer to
She argues that the act of moviegoing satisfies these voyeuristic desires in people. She writes, “The mass of mainstream film portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy,” (pg. 186). In this essay, I will further discuss her viewpoints on cinema and voyeurism, and how it connects to the film Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. Rear Window is a film that follows the
However, on four occasions the camera plunges out of Jeff’s window, into the courtyard. These instances include the opening sequence, the scene where the body of the strangled dog is discovered, the scene where Thorwald pushes Jeff out of the window and the final scene, where Jeff is seen with both his legs in casts. These scenes are important as it gives the audience the opportunity to escapes Jeff’s gaze and adopt an unrestricted overview of the situation for once. The choice of using a non-voyeuristic viewpoint for the final scene is thoughtful as it suggests there is no longer a need to be a voyeur now that the murderer has been