READIN

🦋 Being in the movie

(spoiler alert -- there is an argument to be made that this post contains information about Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window that would make watching the movie less enjoyable for someone who has not already seen it...)

The scene at the end of Rear Window where Stewart is fighting off Burr is really compelling for all the overall silliness of the movie -- there are things about the movie that just don't make sense. The impression you get is that Stewart is imagining things and is convincing people (women) to enter his hallucination just out of strength of character. So all movie long you have been sort of lulled into thinking it's a joke, then all that collapses in a few minutes, and you the viewer are pulled too into Stewart's hallucination. (Specifically your disbelief unravels in the scene where Kelly breaks into Burr's apartment. By the end of that scene you have forgotten any suspicion that somebody's joking around with you.) That really pulls me in to the fright and (literal) suspense in the characters' experience of the movie -- and then bang, the frame is colorful and bright again, it's back to a light comedy. The ending is probable the brightest, lightest scene in the film, and the relief/joy of being lifted back out of that paranoid moment of struggle is what the film leaves you with.

Now I am watching a TCM documentary about The Thriller. Amusing stuff -- one line was that Grace Kelly is "more evidence that still waters run... weird..." If I want to stay up late, the midnight film is going to be Shadow of a Doubt!

posted evening of Friday, October second, 2009
➳ More posts about Rear Window
➳ More posts about Alfred Hitchcock
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As a film major in college, I took a whole class on Alfred Hitchcock. I had to write a term paper on "Rear Window". The genius of Rear Window to me is that it is so self-referential - we are watching Jimmy Stewart watch a movie through his camera and he experiences the same range of emotions "is this real? am I imagining this? what is reality? what's going on?" etc that typical moviegoers experience. A film within a film commenting on us the audience of the first film. Mindf--k!

Voyeurism is a HUGE theme underlying all of Hitchcock's work - in fact he saw the main compulsion of moviewatching as a voyeuristic urge. Probably why his films are so engrossing to this day.

I'm going to dig my paper out lol I think I still have it - thanks for the trip down memory lane....

posted evening of October second, 2009 by Chris Huff

What I really love is the confusion over different levels of unreality in the film -- Stewart is portrayed as imagining something, so his perceived reality is different from the film's "real" reality. Then the twist at the end is that Stewart's fantasy is what's really happening, but it feels more like the reality of the movie has collapsed into Stewart's fantasy. There is similar confusion in The Black Book, indeed it is a major theme of that book.

posted evening of October second, 2009 by Jeremy

I'll have to read that one...

I'm not sure I ever really doubted Stewart's reality being the true one...but it's been a long time since I watched it with fresh eyes...everyone else in the film though is convinced he's making it up, except Grace Kelly who is willing to play along, until she falls into it...

interesting though, there's what the characters in the film believe - there's what JS believes - and then there's what we the audience believe -

slightly more complicated than "Snakes on A Plane", no? :-)

posted evening of October second, 2009 by Chris Huff

There's a motherfucking murderer in this motherfucking apartment complex!

posted evening of October second, 2009 by Jeremy

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