Funneled World

Rating: 8/10 (6 May 2006)

My sense is that Hitchcock was an expert at bringing us into a film world, and keeping us there. Strangely, he seemed largely unable to release us from that world - unable, that is, to end in a smart way. "The Birds" is perhaps the best exception to that.
Here, we are brought into the world of the voyeur - the most interesting bits are visual and (wink, nudge) the main character's a photographer.
After the introduction to who the protagonist is and what his handicap is, the camera's leg is taken away and forced into a particular stance. This is best described as a camera that is curious about what is caught in its funnel of perception. It's uniquely cinematic to narrow the scope this way, an approach that doesn't work as a play. Nor would it work as a novel, except with a burdensome adherence to a first person perspective -- so as a movie, the eye is trapped, yet free to take in narrative in an economic way.
The beginning and middle hold together visually, but the ending relies too much on Hitchcock's trademark visual gags. The story narrative fails to engage us in any real sort of game -- we know the suspect cannot be innocent, no matter how much we suspend our disbelief of Jeff's story. It spends far too much time locked in a pointless struggle with itself over plausibility.
This does earn its high ratings, but for my money, only because it's all about a unique crafting of a visual narrative.