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Rear Window Narrative Analysis

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Lasalle College of the Arts Puttnam School of Film and Animation Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window The analysis of its narrative and the style of narration Chang Chui Fong Shermaine Student No: 18846 Class: BAFLN1B B-FL106: Critical Film Studies – Narrative in Film Mardhiah Osman 14 April 2017 Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window The analysis of its narrative and the style of narration. This essay will investigate and discuss the narrative in Rear Window (1954), and how Hitchcock builds his narration through style. The film follows a classical Hollywood narrative – the focus on a single protagonist – L. B. Jeffries, the double causal structure, and the continuous, linear timeline, all which would be expanded and explained further …show more content…

Jefferies, played by Jimmy Stewart is left at home, wheelchair bound and unable to leave the flat. To pass time while he nurses his injuries, Jeff sits by the window all day, people-watching at his living room window. He looks out across the courtyard to open windows of the neighbour’s apartment, observing their activity and routine. He gives nicknames to the ones that catches his attention the most, since he’s only seen them in their apartment he didn’t really knew them by their names; Miss Torso, Miss Lonely Hearts, as well as the Musician. He has his own problems as well – being trapped in his apartment for the past few weeks, and he still has another week before the cast could be removed. To add on, his relationship with Lisa were in a rocky …show more content…

Eyes are not only objects that can be peered into; they can also peer out. They play a very big role in voyeurism – a theme that Hitchcock uses constantly in his film. They have an incredible capacity for relaying emotional messages, and the viewers are constantly aware of where the eyes are looking, what they are looking at and what emotion they are feeling while they are doing it. Hitchcock mastered storytelling narratively and spatially, with the use of eyes and their eyelines, creating suspense, tension and anticipation in the

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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.

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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.

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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

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These were explored by the use of the motifs of birds, eyes, hands and mirrors (Filmsite.org, n.d.). Hitchcock skilfully guides the audiences through a tale

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