Film Analysis Essay on Rear Window

Rear Window is an exceptionally adapted film that utilizes symbolism to depict the true nature of the present-day middle-class culture. The glass window in the film is the lens through which the individual is separated from the world. If forms and imaginary social boundary that alienates two groups of people that share the same environment yet varied social norms

Rear Window is exemplary in defining the anxieties of social and cultural separation that exist in the modern urban and suburban populations. L. B Jeffries is worried about his neighbors that do not mind his presence among them, while he also feels integrated into his society through the window.

The film Rear Window is ideal in the conceptualization of the Other. Principally, there are two distinct classes of people that live on Greenwich Village Street. One class comprises on L. B. Jeffries while the other is made of his neighbors. L. B Jeffries characterizes the Other based on what he observes through his glass window.

Thesis

Urban life exhibits a double standard where dwellers feel alienated from their surroundings, yet they live as components of an imaginary community that shares a common lifestyle, problems, and geographical location. Cornell Woolrich s It must be Murder recreates this tension in a vivid manner which shows the reader just how it is possible to feel integrated into a society whose members rarely make any physical contact. The protagonist in this short story is a veteran journalist who lives in a neighborhood with people of peculiar characteristics. He spends long sleepless nights watching the rather unusual behaviors of his neighbors who are oblivious to his presence amongst them. Woolrich portrays how well the protagonist studies the behaviors of his neighbors to make a conclusion about their lifestyles and daily activities. In the adaptation of this story in Alfred Hitchcocks Rear Window (1954), the camera serves the same purpose as L. B. Jeffries eyes. It scans the neighborhood to show the viewer how its residents live. It moves from one house to another, giving details about how people cook, eat, sleep, and even talk. The story tells all these through text. Anna Woodhouse amalgamates both the story and the film in an article published in the Journal of Comparative American Studies. She reinforces the symbolic position of the glass window in both the book and the film. She skillfully depicts the behavioral dualism of urban dwellers as Woolrich pens it in her short story. The socio-cultural tension that exists in the urban setting is a product of a stressful life marked by financial hardships, chronic illnesses, and broken marriages.

Plus

Woodhouse, Anna. "The Woolrichian Window and the Democratization of the Detective in Rear Window." Comparative American Studies: An International Journal 11.4 (2013): 387-403.

In an attempt to simultaneously deconstruct Hitchcocks Rear Window and Woolrichs It must be Murder, the author positions the glass window as an abstract social boundary that separates the protagonist from the Other. The author also praises Hitchcocks skills in implicating the viewer in the protagonists voyeuristic practice.