A (Rear) Window on Film Studies

I developed a film studies class over the last few years; met twice a week for a film screening. The class was geared toward absolute beginners—people who mostly had little previous experience analyzing films and who had seen very few pre-1970s films on their own. The first film we watched was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). I have come to see this film as a kind of gateway classic. Anyone simply watching it and paying even begrudging attention (the lowest bar to clear) can’t help but get caught in Hitchcock’s tightening net of suspense and therein learning that they can be affected by an old movie after all.

It’s a great introduction to the movie star at, perhaps, the center of Hollywood’s firmament, and one of the most important directors in film history. It’s a relatively fast-moving, highly-suspenseful mystery, full of pleasures for first-time viewers (not to mention n-time viewers). I showed it to my sons last night, aged 8 and 11, and it more than held their attention—it safely guided them into the physical experience of art-horror, little did they know (the 11 y.o. just called it suspense, which is true, it’s not a horror film, per se, but the effect is the same in places), while still being tamer than most of the live-action movies they’ve seen (Star Warses, Marvels, Zemeckises, Harry Potterses).

But what I think makes Rear Window such a great introduction to film studies is that it’s a movie about film spectatorship and the work of the film director. Psychologically, it’s about voyeurism, of course. But taking that theme further, it’s more fundamentally about looking and constructing meaning. These are the almost reciprocal tasks of the audience and the director. Any number of stories await Jimmy Stewart out his rear window, he just has to start looking and making meaning. Once he begins to be pulled into any particular narrative, he can zoom in using his various lenses of different sizes, but is he getting closer to the truth? Or is he simply constructing it in line with his own prejudices and perversions?

These questions are foundational to beginning to break apart and examine and figure out how a film creates its effects, and perhaps why it does.