Cinematic shots in Rear Window

             

            Rear Window uses many cinematic shots and angles to help tell the story. The major thing in the film is how it starts, it starts with the prolonged pan at the beginning of the film. For the first minute and thirty seconds there are no cuts at all, just one long pan showing the entire set. This technique is used to show us what is going on with the character and the setting they are in. This is important because it introduces us to the neighborhood, the setting as a whole, and the point of view we will have the entire film. When we begin we don’t know this is the only spot we will be viewing from, but after watching the whole thing, we see that the first pan was crucial to setting up the scene for the viewer. Along with that there are a lot of long shots when Jeff is looking out the window, Hitchcock is known to do this in other films like his 1948 film Rope. Now they are not as long as the shots in Rope but we can see a similar style here in his work. 

That helps transition to the main angle we see throughout the film, the angle through the window of Jeff’s apartment. The angle from his window makes the entire film, it makes us feel as stuck and trapped as our main character Jeff. By doing this Hitchcock makes the broken leg affect us as well, it traps us from seeing the complete scenes. It also makes us have to make a lot of assumptions about what is happening, this is so the film doesn’t just tell us everything. It helps keep the suspense and the mystery alive throughout, without actually giving us the thrill of being up close to the actions. This helps us get close with our main characters as well, we are always hearing Jeff speaking or people in the apartment interacting. Thus making us feel like we are a part of the film, stuck in the apartment with Jeff.

Finally the specific shot I want to focus on is the shots of the people in the windows. When one specific window is shown, it is telling its own story. Each person has their own life and struggles, so looking into what others have to go through helps us see the struggles of our neighbors. You have the life of the young ballet dancer all happy and full of energy. Then you have the sad life of the musician and Miss Lonely heart, failed love and work going bad. We also see the main life we look in on, Thorwald's home and the terror that ensues in it. We see this effect Jeff when we look into the windows of the couples. When looking in we hear sirens, making it seem like a bad thing to be married. This helps us see Jeff's reasoning on why he doesn't want to be married, it seems like a bad scary thing to do. Constant arguing and feeling like they are always being nagged. Hitchcock uses a wide variety of shots and angles to help us as viewers be engaged and feel what the characters are feeling.