The Architecture of Gazing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window
In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), a wheelchair-bound photographer observes the surrounding neighborhood through the rear window of his apartment. L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (played by Jimmy Stewart), is an aging photographer who has spent his life traveling the world to capture exciting and exotic images for the magazine that employs him. However, after an accident involving a racecar, Jeff breaks his leg, forcing him to stay in a cast and wheelchair for a period of seven weeks.
We, as viewers, are introduced to Jeff at the start of his last week in the cast. Boredom has set in as Jeff struggles to pass the time in his two-bedroom apartment. Despite warnings from his part-time nurse to mind his own business, Jeff becomes fascinated with his neighbors, particularly a man by the name of Lars Thorwald, whose apartment sits opposite Jeff’s, separated by the building’s shared courtyard. Jeff’s socialite girlfriend, Lisa (played by Grace Kelly), eventually joins Jeff in his attempt to investigate the strange occurrences in the Thornwalds’ home and the surrounding Greenwich Village apartments.
The Opening Sequence and Establishment of Space
From the very first shot, Hitchcock establishes the significance of space, architecture, and perspective in Rear Window. The opening credit sequence (pictured above) looks at the outdoor area from the perspective of Jeff’s apartment. Each shutter raises one by one, revealing different segments of the buildings outside. The camera then pushes in to further investigate the surrounding area, focusing on the open windows that reveal individual domiciles.
To the right of Jeff’s apartment is a large, open window, revealing the apartment of a lonely songwriter, playing the piano and providing music for the entire complex. Directly across from Jeff is the Thornwald residence, situated on the second floor of the building. The four windows show the hallway outside the Thornwalds’ apartment, the entryway, the living room, and the bedroom, respectively. Thornwald’s invalid wife bickers with her husband from the bedroom, while he begrudgingly cares for her.
Due to the blistering heat, the entire neighborhood has its windows flung open, giving Jeff (and viewers) an intimate look into everyone’s personal lives. On the third floor, a married couple sleeps out on the balcony to try to keep cool. They own a small dog, which they put in a basket and lower down with a rope to play in the courtyard. To the left of Thornwald lives a scantily clad dancer, known only as “Miss Torso.” She frequently dances in her underwear in front of the windows, functioning as the sexualized object of Jeff’s voyeurism and the male gaze. A middle-aged woman lives underneath Miss Torso and frequently pokes her nose into her neighbors’ business.
A small alleyway leads out the street and separates the central part of the building from the apartments on the left side of Jeff’s window. A woman with a parakeet lives on the first floor, while the second floor is occupied by young newlyweds. There are a few windows and apartments that are occupied by even more residents, but they are given relatively little attention.
The Male Gaze as a Narrative Device
While Miss Torso reflects the sexualized object of the male gaze, Jeff’s perspective of the apartment works as a framing device to move the narrative forward. The viewer interprets everything seen through Jeff’s lens. This takes on a more literal significance when Jeff breaks out his binoculars and camera to better observe the neighbors. He frequently questions his own motives and the ethics of voyeurism, yet his boredom and increasing attachment to the neighborhood ensures that he continues to watch their every move.
The heat serves as an important narrative device as well, as it justifies the open windows, which in turn facilitate the male gaze. Jeff can scan the entire neighborhood and the activities within each apartment freely. In her seminal essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey argues that Hitchcock’s films (like Rear Window and The 39 Steps) feature a strong male hero who takes “fascination with an image through scopophilic eroticism as the subject of the film.” Mulvey cites Hitchcock’s ideological positioning of the man as the correct, lawful character and the woman as the wrong character to demonstrate the power structures built into cinema. Moreover, Hitchcock’s use of subjective camera and gendered identification processes forces viewers — both male and female — to share his “uneasy gaze.”
When Lisa’s character is first introduced, she is portrayed as a large face descending on Jeff. Her shadow creeps across his sleeping face in a sinister way before he wakes up and the two share an intimate moment. Then, the camera cuts to a wider shot, wherein Lisa turns on lamps and introduces herself, while the camera lingers on her dress and body. We see Jeff stare at her with sexual desire, which mirrors the view of the voyeuristic camera. Mulvey states that Hitchcock had no qualms with admitting his interest in voyeurism, and is quick to make Lisa a symbol of exhibitionism. Through her obsession with fine clothing, style, and fashion, Lisa becomes the “passive image of visual perfection.”
When placed within Jeff’s home, Lisa is merely an object of sexual desire — but nothing more. Though Lisa desperately wants to marry Jeff, he views her as a rather dull accessory in his life. He has no desire to commit to her, as he doesn’t see the value in her perspective. After all, she is a snobbish socialite from Park Avenue. How could she come to understand the life of a travel photographer in Greenwich Village?
As the story progresses, the spaces serve to alter Jeff’s view. When Lisa leaves the comfort of his home and enters the shared space of the courtyard and, subsequently, Thornwald’s apartment, the relationship suddenly changes. He comes to view her as more than a passive spectator. However — from a cinematic perspective — she still holds no power as an agent of action; she is just another object of Jeff’s powerful gaze.
Architecture Frames Space in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window
The male gaze works in tandem with the architecture and set design in Rear Window to establish different conceptions of (and identifications with) space. Before we ever see Jeff’s apartment, we are introduced to the surrounding neighborhood. The camera pans across a series of connected brick buildings that all share a common courtyard. Within this space, individual windows further delineate the neighborhood into individual apartments. Within these apartments, the objects of Jeff’s gaze go about their daily lives, completely oblivious to his voyeurism.
In Jean Douchet’s account of the film, Jeff serves as a spectator who “invents his own cinema.” Therefore, Jeff can be read as a stand-in for the audience, while his apartment window is akin to the movie screen. The world outside his window is the movie itself. Out of sheer boredom, Jeff builds an entire narrative simply by looking, much like a movie spectator does while watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Thus, the film becomes a meta-analysis of film spectatorship and the act of watching a movie.
The entire film was shot on an enormous set at Paramount Studios. Set designers Hal Pereira and Joseph MacMillan Johnson spent six weeks building a fictional apartment complex from scratch, giving Hitchcock the ability to move the camera around within a completely fabricated space. When neighbors move between their respective windows, they are literally and figuratively framed for the viewers. They live within a domicile, and we only know them through the vantage point of Jeff’s apartment.
Thus, architecture is the primary framing device from which we can interpret and analyze space in Rear Window. Until the very last moments of the film, Jeff lives solely within the confines of his apartment. He identifies with the space, as well as the neighborhood around him. When Lisa enters, she is treated as a foreigner, unable to fully identify with Jeff and the rest of his middle-class and bohemian neighbors. This creates a strange dynamic in which the well-traveled Jeff feels extremely attached to his local neighborhood, despite the fact that he’s rarely at home. The design of the apartment building makes it feel like a thriving, interconnected community with which Jeff feels comfortable — even if he doesn’t know any of his neighbors personally.
While Jeff identifies very closely with his Greenwich Village home and often frames it in direct contrast to the high-class Park Avenue community in which Lisa thrives, it is ultimately the points of action within the space that dictate Jeff’s identification. When the action takes place inside Jeff’s apartment, he behaves ill at ease, desperate to return to the window to engage in his voyeuristic activities. Thus, Greenwich Village is both a home and a distinctly separate space for Jeff. Like a film viewer, he wishes to watch without having to participate in the action.
As Jeff’s somewhat passive investigation into Lars Thornwald intensifies, the movement between spaces creates dread, suspense, and adventurism. Once Lisa and Jeff’s nurse enter the courtyard, they leave the three-dimensional space of Jeff’s apartment and enter the two-dimensional space of Jeff’s cinematic world. This, in turn, makes the events outside his window become much more real for Jeff, forcing him to disengage with his voyeuristic fantasies and accept that Lisa is in real danger.
When Lisa enters Thornwald’s apartment, it ramps up the suspense even further. Jeff watches helplessly as Thornwald returns home, discovers Lisa, and begins to assault her. During some sequences, the architecture itself prevents Jeff (and by extension the audience) from adequately seeing the action. In essence, the building acts as an impediment to Jeff’s male gaze. When characters step outside of their window frames and behind brick walls, it temporarily breaks the gaze, frustrating Jeff in the process.
The police arrive just in time to save her, but when Lisa signals to Jeff that she has Mrs. Thornwald’s wedding ring, Thornwald takes notice. He suddenly looks up at Jeff, breaking down the cinematic wall that has protected him throughout most of the film. As the police take Lisa away, Jeff is left alone in his apartment, where Thornwald comes to confront his accuser. The ensuing scuffle has Jeff falling out of his window, officially breaking out of his home space and into the cinematic world he has created.
Conclusion
Space, architecture, and perspective all work together to create a cinematic universe within the film narrative of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. We, as viewers, identify with Jeff (and Hitchcock) through subjective shots, the male gaze, and the power structures built into the script. At the same time, architecture delineates conceptual and physical spaces, particularly between “home” and the outside world. Finally, movement between these spaces breaks down the barriers between the voyeuristic Jeff and the objects of his gaze, forcing him to engage with the world as both a passive viewer and an active participant.
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