Ingeniously Crafted

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2018)

It is no fun talking to a know it all. When watching a movie, it is no fun being one. I was grateful that Hitchcock knew this when seeing Rear Window. The movie is so effective because we usually only know as much as our main character, Jeff. The movie also makes Jeff our avatar in the movie through several techniques.
Like Jeff, the audience is confined to his apartment. We frequently see things from his point of view. When the camera is focused on him, we usually see him at eye level. Even though he is in a wheelchair, the camera is never made to pity him. Jeff and us are equals.
While the camera does frequently look to Jeff's neighbors, they are usually far away, at the distance Jeff would see them at. One reason may be to isolate the audience from them as much as possible. This is so the audience does not get concerned about Jeff's spying. The movie would be quite different if the protagonist was a young dancer who was suffering from a peeping Tom in the building across from her. The closest to empathy we get is to the woman on the balcony after her dog is killed. The camera lingers on her, still from afar, as she screams at her neighbors and laments how isolated they all are from each other. This is possibly the only time we get close-ups of any of the neighbors. This is, of course, just a way to jolt the viewer back into attention after the mystery runs into a dead end, and to turn our suspicions back on Thorwald. However, the main reason for this is to place us in Jeff's shoes. If he cannot see his neighbors close up, then for the most part neither can we.
One possible exception to this perceptual connection is when Jeff falls asleep, and we see Thorwald and a woman leave his apartment. Later, Boyle says that the landlord caught Thorwald and his wife leaving for the train station, and due to what we saw, we are led to believe him. Later, we know that the woman was not Thorwald's wife. Hitchcock may have let us see something that Jeff did not, but he only did that to deceive us. Even though we saw more than Jeff, we still do not know more than Jeff.
There is also one notable exception with the angles of the film. It is when Thorwald confronts Jeff in his apartment. For the first time, the camera is far away and looking slightly down on Jeff. He is backed against the wall. He looks trapped. For most of the film, he is our equal. Now, he is in danger, therefore so are we. Thorwald is treated to a low-angle shot. He is menacing and imposing. For the majority of the movie, he was far away, a merely suspicious presence. But now he is at our hero's doorstep, and the danger is clear and present. The angles are not too extreme, but in this movie it is rare for the camera to deviate from eye level.
This film would not be nearly as iconic as it is without the attention paid to Jeff. Every technique employed in this film is done to ensure the audience's connection to him. The camera does not merely stay on him, it treats him like we would want to be treated: it looks him in the eye. It is shot not only through his eyes, but through his camera and binoculars. This means that whenever he ventures to learn more about the mystery, it feels like we are accomplishing something too. Without this connection, Rear Window would just be another movie with a great premise but wasted potential.