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Essay / Hitchcock's Rear Window Review
The film “Rear Window” by film legend Alfred Hitchcock is a masterpiece. Alfred Hitchcock is known for his experimental style of filmmaking and his use of many different filmmaking techniques and the film "Rear Window" is no exception and is full of amazing techniques. Also through this film, Alfred Hitchcock ironizes the human nature of voyeurism. Voyeurism is a pleasure of spying on people, monitoring their private lives. I will describe three wonderful elements of "Rear Window" that make this film one of the best films of all time: telling a story without dialogue, shooting the film in a single location, and the impact of voyeurism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayFirst, telling a story by showing details without saying anything has a great effect on the audience. According to the book “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jeck Trout (2001), people perceive visual images better than words. The first scene of “Rear Window” is a great example of telling a story without words. At the beginning, we see a man in a wheelchair then his broken leg with his name written on a cast. Then we see a close-up of his broken camera and photos of the explosion, of the car race. Thanks to these photos, we can understand that the man's name is Jeff, that he is a photographer and that he broke his leg while doing a photo report. Other examples of visual storytelling are snapshots of the lives of Jeff's neighbors. We see a man with the piano in his room and guess he is a musician. A woman dancing ballet while preparing breakfast. She's a ballerina. Throughout the film, we can tell each character's story just by observing certain details or actions they perform. We get guesses using our imagination and this makes us more interested in what is happening on the screen. Visual storytelling gets the audience engaged in a story and guessing what the film is about. Alfred Hitchcock once said, "If it's a good movie, the sound could turn off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what's going on." Telling a story without any words is therefore a brilliant technique that involves the audience. One of Hitchcock's greatest achievements in this film is how he puts the audience into Jeffries' perspective. No camera moves from Jeff's apartment, which is why the audience feels like they are seeing everything through Jeff's eyes. Plus, it makes us feel and think like the main character. We don't know any more than Jeff, which puts us in tension and creates intrigue. For example, the conversation scene between Jeff and Detective Doyle when Doyle claims that Mr. Thorwald did not kill his wife. He gives logical arguments and Jeff begins to doubt his accusation. Like Jeff, we think it may be Jeff's imagination and that Mrs. Thorwald is not dead. This shows the power of the shooting technique. Hitchcock uses Doyle's point of view to show Thorwald sitting in his apartment by the window and calmly smoking. We look at Doyle from a high angle as Jeff sees him, making Doyle appear taller and more important than Jeff. At the end of the scene, the camera follows Doyle and we understand that he has won this debate. In this case we feel disoriented, what will happen in the end? Is Jeff right or wrong? Filming in one location is very difficult to establish, but it creates the possibility of using amazing techniques like the “Kulishov” effect. In “Rear Window” we see a mid-shot of/