Rear WindowAlfred Hitchcock, 1954

Alfred Hitchcock

Studied at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London.

he became a draftsman and advertising designer

became intrigued by photography and started working in film production in London

title-card designer (for silent movies) for the London branch of what would become Paramount Pictures.

In 5 years he became a director

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

The 39 Steps (1935), is often considered one of the best films from his early period.

in 1939 he received a 7 year Hollywood movie contract and he moved to the USA

Rebecca, 1940 (Academy Award, Best Picture)

(Work was diverse in the 40’s) romantic comedy, courtroom drama, and Noir

In 1940, he moved to Scott’s Valley in the Santa Cruz mountains

Became producer/director and shot Suspicion there

Spellbound, 1945

Notorious, 1946 (plot included uranium which led to Hitchcock being under surveillance by the FBI

Rope, 1948

Recurring Attributes

Gallows Humor

Suspense

Voyeurism (from subjective viewpoints)

Confined spaces: Rear Window, Lifeboat and Rope

a character—and the viewer for whom he is a surrogate—can misinterpret events according to his own preconceptions.

The most persuasive way of demonstrating the seductiveness of such misinterpretations is to let the viewer make the same mistake. Having been seduced into adopting a character's point of view that is later exposed as illusion

Rear Window (1954) is the film that quintessentially presents a subjective point of view within an apparently realistic style. The single obvious distortion is the overloud sound Thornwald.

Elisabeth Weis: The Silent Scream - Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track (1982)

Mise en Scene

Shot on a very large sound stage

Takes place almost entirely in a single room

Francois Truffault in Cahiers du Cinema wrote about how the mise en scene in Rear Window is a metaphor for the cinema

Laura Mulvey in Visual Pleasure and narrative cinema (change in Jeff’s desire towards Lisa)

Audio Deep Space

Diegetic vs. Non Diegetic Sound (Rear Window relies entirely on diegetic sound.)

Shot on a sound stage, but realism achieved through atmospheric audio

Aural references from multiple directions offscreen

Importance of offscreen space

Fidelity vs TelephonyFidelity: all aspects of an event are inherently significant

Telephony: intrinsic hierarchy

Walter Murch: sound design is “little lies that add up to the truth”

Post: production sound is more realistic than production sound

Location sound: recording devices can’t record all frequencies of some sounds (like gunshots)

Distortion and Background Noise

Sound Sources

Both realistic in source

Most asychronous

Visuals (restricted to apartment)

Audio Sources are seemingly unlimited

Hitchcock was a “proponent of asynchronous sound; he considered it redundant to show the source of dialogue or sound effects”

His 40’s films had quite a bit of dialogue

His later films like Vertigo, Psycho and even Rear Window have long stretches with no dialogue

When characters speak the dialogue presents a new dimension to the story and is rarely redundant.

The neighbors being watched are rarely the source of the audio (less than 1/10 of the time) The soundtrack always makes the viewer aware of a “larger sphere of activity”

the integration of audio goes against the editing and mise en scene which isolate the people in different apartments

Unity of sound and a multiplicity of spaces

(Irony) juxtaposition of one sound against various images with different meanings

played at the party of the composer

Jeff, is waiting for his fiancee who has not yet shown up for her evening visit

Miss Lonelyhearts, who eventually gives up "waiting" and goes to a restaurant to pick up a man

"Waiting for my true love to appear."

Thorwald’s Approach

expressionistic “long, slow reverberated”

Conveys Jeff’s experience of being approached

Jeff’s apartment is no longer his place of protection, but of vulnerability

Up to that point the sounds become gradually more focused

Expressionistic, unrealistic sound just as Jeff is most threatened

Elisabeth Weis: Final Paragraph

(Soon, we even see the results of Jeff's blinding flashes from Thorwald’s point of view.) The sudden shift to an expressionistic presentation of Jeff's subjectivity creates an emotional distance that encourages the viewer to judge Jeff's behavior and to recognize retrospectively the subjectivity (and therefore the culpability) of Jeff's earlier perceptions as well.”