This was a fun paper! In this exercise, I talked about how important editing is to Hitchcock’s filmmaking style.
Rear Window’s Unique Narrative Form
Hitchcock’s film Rear Window is a prime example of many prolific editing techniques, several of which were mainstreamed by the film itself. The most interesting editing technique used by Hitchcock speaks to Lev Kulishov’s theories relating to the juxtapositions of images to each other in the editing of a film. Additionally, Rear Window is unique in that the protagonist, Jeffries, is completely confined to a single room in his apartment for the entirety of the film. Finally, Hitchcock’s direct treatment of subplots makes the film notable.
We begin with Kulishov’s theories relating to images surrounding an actor’s facial expressions -- in this instance, the facial expressions of James Stewart and Grace Kelly. The meanings of their gazes were completely controlled by editing in this film, as the camera must always be placed in between the actor and the object of their gaze because of the set’s layout. The character’s face can be shot in profile looking out the window, or from the exterior of the window (with the camera looking inward) as the actor gazes outward. These shots are then edited by Hitchcock to sit in between images depicting what the actor is supposedly looking at during filming. What Kulishov’s experiments discovered is that the editor has great power to influence the meaning of an actor’s facial expression by what images are placed around it. Elizabeth Cowie explains, in her article on the film, that if you take an image of James Stewart’s Jeffries smiling as he looks out his window at the little dog being lowered in its basket down to the courtyard, it brings to mind a much different different connotation than if he was smiling while watching a little girl undressing in her bedroom.
The form of Rear Window gives the director greater control over the content of the film than its contemporaries. The acting is dependent on editing for the performance to be interpreted with the correct meaning. Hitchcock could have changed the connotation of James Stewart’s entire performance by substituting surrounding images with other images. The way that Stewart expresses emotion informs the way that the audience thinks, not only about what Jeffries is seeing, but about the character of Jeffries himself. If his reactions do not match what the audience expects them to be, it can change the audience’s opinion of the character. With the voyeuristic nature of the film, it would have been easy to make Jeffries into a lecherous old man even after the filming was over, simply through editing.
Changing the character of Jeffries in post-production would be quite easy, due to the necessity of filming all the scenes in segments. Hitchcock had to film action in Jeffries’ apartment separately from events the characters are reacting to in the apartment building across the courtyard. The film’s characters are limited to observing the action from Jeffries’ apartment; therefore, the entirety of Rear Window is filmed from the vantage point of the apartment. However, Hitchcock is able to expand the action far beyond the four walls of Jeffries apartment. Jeffries’ nurse and his girlfriend Lisa involve themselves in the investigation of Lars Thorwald (the suspected murderer) by digging up the garden and by breaking in to his apartment. The audience is limited by Jeffries’ limitations -- we can see, but we cannot leave his apartment. Very few films are able to be successful with this format, but Rear Window actually excels with this format. Hitchcock has essentially created a film within a film. Jeffries finding ways to entertain himself is the main premise. Naturally, this has led him to one of the most basic forms of entertainment: people-watching. Essentially, Jeffries is doing exactly what every film audience does, though what he is watching is real in the context of the film. We can imagine that a modern-day Rear Window could have Jeffries setting up video cameras and viewing the action on different screens in his apartment. The different windows of the apartment building are like television sets, each showing different films. Jeffries observes each story of these films equally in the beginning of Rear Window. The Lars Thorwald story seems to be a subplot to the more interesting stories of Ms. Torso, the Newlyweds, Ms. Lonelyhearts, and the Songwriter. We soon find, however, that the Lars Thorwald story becomes a murder mystery, and the most riveting. The other stories become subplots, much less important than the murder of Mrs. Thorwald.
The creating of literal subplots in Rear Window is almost completely unique to this film. You have everyone in the film living in the same, yet completely segregated world. The only thing that connects the story of Ms. Lonelyhearts to Lars Thorwald and Ms. Torso is the main character’s insistence on watching them. When the action lulls, when Lars Thorwald leaves his apartment or when he spends time alone smoking in the dark, the story focuses on the different subplots -- the different windows. At one point, the subplot of Ms. Lonelyhearts actually competes with the main story-line. She begins to commit suicide, but is stopped from hurting herself when she hears the beautiful music of the songwriter in another apartment. Though the characters in Jeffries’ apartment are the only ones who know about Ms. Lonelyheart’s attempt at suicide, they would not have been able to save her. This parallel’s the notion that sometimes knowledge is not power -- the omniscient audience has already learned this through the suspense of knowing things which happen while Jeffries is asleep.
Thus, for these three reasons, Rear Window’s editing is central to its plot. The editing makes this film work, if it was done with less flourish and skill, Rear Window would be completely disjointed, the facial expressions of the actors could easily have been misaligned with the action, the suspense could have been broken up with scenes occurring outside of Jeffries’ apartment, or the subplots could have been pointless and unwoven into the story-line. Instead, the subplots, the confined space of Jeffries apartment and his limitations and his inability to act reflect the experience of the viewer. The actor’s facial expressions are subtle and effective against their surrounding images. Thus, Rear Window is a triumph of editing.