Symbolism And Motifs In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

At the beginning of the film, a camera movement reveals Jeff´s profession and why he is immobilized in a wheel-chair. He is a photographer, interested in looking at other´s lives. So, he could be described as a voyeur. Across a very limited space- the courtyard of the neighbourhood, he spends his time looking through the window in order to avoid the boredom. He looks at different windows with different stories, just as the audience goes

The protagonist of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ is trapped, stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg and we share his pain, we are also trapped. In a different way of course. We are trapped in his point of view. As the successful photographer that is L.B Jeffries (Jeff to his fiancée), played by James Stewart, passes his long and limited days and nights sitting by his window and shamelessly keeping an eye on his neighbours around him, we too share this obsession. The fact that Jeff has no chose but to sit and stare out the window, he cannot stop looking into this inviting and every changing view. We are like Jeff in the way that once we sit down in a cinema we too can only look at what is put in front of us. Patrick Stewart’s character symbolises all cinema goers, a human being brazenly watching the life of an alien. One of the first shots we see in the film is the opening of Jeff’s curtains by his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter). This

Rear Window, a 1954 romance/murder-mystery by the renowned golden age director Alfred Hitchcock, is a film that explores a multitude of themes and genres through the voyeuristic gaze of protagonist L.B. Jefferies. Jefferies, or ‘Jeff’ as he commonly known throughout the film, is a middle-aged bachelor recently hospitalised due to his high-risk career as a photojournalist. This hindered condition serves as an important foundation on which the movie is built upon as Jeff’s forced lifestyle being in a wheelchair causes an abrupt stop in his usual high intensity way of life and causes him to quench his boredom in other ways, predominantly watching the other residents in his apartment complex through the ‘rear window’ of his apartment. Observing the events that happen in the privacy of each of his neighbours’ apartments is certainly not minding one’s business but Jeff continues to do so anyway and ends up in all

What makes a story enjoyable? Is it the plot? Or is it the methods the author uses to connect to the reader? Plot is a big thing, but it is the literary devices that bring the story together. In the three stories, “The Tunnel” by Sarah Ellis, “The Skating Party” by Merna Summers and “The Bicycle” by Jillian Horton all have unique literary devices to make each story more intriguing and to give them the feeling of being part of the story.

This paper will discuss the motif of the double in Strangers on a Train. While the double is a recurring motif in Hitchcock’s work that he routinely employs in order to explore questions of moral responsibility, identity, and guilt, it receives its most overt and thorough treatment in Strangers on a Train. Studies of the film have consistently understood Bruno as a stand in for Guy’s unspoken desire, the chaos held at bay by societal order - Guy does indeed want to ‘get rid of’ his wife, but he transfers this responsibility (and associated guilt) to Bruno (Walker; Wood; Dellolio; Truffaut). As Walker notes, in Hitchcock’s films, the double most often serves as an ‘alter ego’ that enacts the repressed/disavowed/unpermitted desires of another character. Indeed, as Walker points out, There is little ambiguity that this is precisely what Hitchcock meant to communicate in the film, as he has formally stated this in correspondence with Francois Truffaut:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window has several themes. One major theme is relationships. The lead character, Jeff Jeffries, a photographer and committed bachelor, is involved in a relationship with Lisa Fremont, a model, although the relationship has some tension due to Jeff’s lack of commitment. When Jeff is confined to his apartment recovering from a broken leg, he begins spying through his rear window on his neighbors in a nearby apartment. Through her frequent visits, Lisa is drawn into this spying as well. In each of the apartments, lives are lived and relationships are being played out, and the dynamics of those relationships reflect back to aspects of Jeff’s and Lisa’s relationship and their anxieties and desires.

This brilliant film about watching the neighbours simultaneously represents a self-reflexive film about the cinema and filmmaking. “[…] Jeff embodies the activity and passivity of both the film maker and the spectator; the director creates and waits, while the viewer

Alfred Hitchcock, director and producer of Rear Window, drew his idea for the film from Cornell Woolrich’s short story, “It Had to Be Murder.” He also drew inspiration from 1950s American culture, such as Americans’ suspicion of others during the Cold War era, the overall impending fear of communism, and women’s gender roles. Rear Window predominantly focuses on female objectification and the male gaze through the POV of the subjectively perverted L.B. Jeffries.

Within modern day society, there are many people who have eyesight cannot “see.” This sad truth is reflected within the husband who cannot connect with his wife because he displays a lack of insight. As the protagonist of the short story Cathedral, the husband had to undergo a certain change within the story in order to connect with his wife, who actually tends to be the antagonist. Through the usage of the husband’s language, behavior, and interaction with other characters–the author, Raymond Carver proves that it is possible to “see” once one accepts change.

Alfred Hitchcock 's Rear Window explores the lives of those who feel isolated within society. The 1954 film, set in the tenements of Grenwich village, depicts those who are incapable of fitting into society 's expectations, as well as those who feel isolated from common interaction with others. Moreover, Hitchcock displays how its human nature to seek comfort and deeper connection even with those who are surrounded by others. Despite depicting characters as lonely, the progression of the film illustrates how individuals can be freed from isolation.

Rear Window, a 1954 Hitchcock film is deceptively simple on the surface, but contains messages about marriage, class and privacy, to name a few. This essay will explore how attitudes to social standing in the 1950’s are expressed in the film. Lisa displays the attitude that class shouldn't be a factor in determining how she behaves or whom she should get married to. Jeffries is an example of the attitude that because of their material wealth and status, those in the upper echelons of society aren't entirely human and treats them as such. Stella portrays the attitude that class shouldn't be a major consideration in who to marry, but Jeffries would be foolish to not exercise social mobility and marry Lisa to improve his own social standing. Hitchcock's perspective to the attitudes of the characters in Rear Window also

Alfred Hitchcocks powerful and complex psychological thriller, horror film “Psycho” (1960) was classes as the first sub genre of horror, the slasher. The film ushered in the era of slashes with graphic content of blood-letting and shocking killings of the time. Although this was Hitchcock’s first horror film, he was labelled as a horror film director ever since. The film contains disturbing themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human vulnerabilities and victimisation. These themes symbolise the effects of money, oedipal murder and the dark histories. These were explored by the use of the motifs of birds, eyes, hands and mirrors (Filmsite.org, n.d.).

In Laura Mulvey’s article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she writes about the relationship between voyeurism, cinema, and gender. She begins by describing the concept of scopophilia, which means to gain pleasure from looking. She writes that scopophilia is inherently active/masculine, and that pleasure is derived from looking at other people as mere objects. On the other hand, the passive/feminine is derived from the experience of being looked at (pg.188). Mulvey sees this binary relationship between viewer and object being viewed as a part of our culture, and the greatest example of this is found in cinema. 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.

Alfred Hitchcock used various symbols throughout the film Psycho to allow the viewer to get an insight of what is happening in the film. Symbolism is an exceptional way to entice the viewer as it creates suspense and makes it better to understand the film. Alfred uses paintings as a symbol, which can be seen in multiple scenes, to symbolize a certain character in the film to the painting and foreshadow events in the film. This allows the viewer to get more detail on the character’s personality and what is about to happen.

Society is fooled into believing in the applied connection among people. Benedict Anderson’s idea of imagined communities emphasizes that, “… the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (5). Members of neighborhoods, cities, states, or countries feel a sense of unity with other members for living in the same place or maybe having the same basic values, but true unity comes from understanding the similarities among each other, considering the impact a person can have on another, and caring about lives. Recognizing the importance of lives being socially intertwined is necessary to sustain a considerate society.