Dichotomy In Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock once defined his film Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954), as the story of a man who
cannot move and looks through a window, about what he sees and how he reacts to it (Truffaut, 1986).
In addition, Hitchcock constructs the character of the protagonist of the film, Jeff (James Steward), not
only by using cinematographic devices to show how Jeff interprets what he sees and his own life, but
also stabilising a dichotomy between what he looks at and what he lives.
At the beginning of the film, a camera movement reveals Jeff´s profession and why he is immobilized
in a wheel chair. He is a photographer, interested in looking at other´s lives; consequently, he could be
described as a voyeur. Across a very limited space the courtyard ... Show more content on
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For those reasons, even when he is in a sweet moment with Lisa in his arms, he prefers looking at the
outside of his apartment, and even he feels more sexual attraction towards Miss. Torso (Georgine
Darcy) through the window than towards Lisa, who is in his arms or more explicit, offering herself in
his sofa. Lisa as Thorvald at the end, represents a menace and when he feels threatened, does not
hesitate to take his binoculars (or even the flash), as the only way to prevent danger.
To sum up, Hitchcock uses a film as Rear window to construct an allegory between reality and fiction.
The end of the film is ambiguous because although Jeff chooses real life, as he presents his back to the
window and to the outside, the clash between reality and fiction has a price, if you choose fiction
probably, you could lose to live in a real society, but if you choose reality, you could lose your
identity, as Jeff. So, inside this film, there is not only one crime, but also other metaphoric murdered:
Jeff, who has renounced to his fantasies to adapt himself in a conformed
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