Alfred Hitchcock Rear Window Analysis

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Rear Window – Alfred Hitchcock (1954) The ten minute scene I have chosen to write about begins approximately at one minute and thirty seconds into the film. It starts by showing a tracking shot of the world that L.B. Jefferies inhabits, resting on him for only a second, before continuing to introduce us to the other characters that we see throughout the film. Beginning from the window where Jefferies sits, the shot shows the limited view that Jefferies has from his chair, but takes in all the different characters that Jefferies observes. As the film begins, the camera acts as our eyes, showing us what Jefferies can see from his window, the way he can see it. The shot lets the viewer see how small the world that Jefferies views from his…show more content…
We then go back to observing the people that Jeff watches himself every day, going about their daily routines. At three minutes and twenty-seven seconds, the camera, again, turns to Jeff, panning down his entire body, showing the viewer his injury, and without words, explaining who Jeff is and what his life is about. We see him in the body cast, so straight away, it is obvious that he is confined to his chair and apartment a lot of the time. Moving on to his broken camera, the viewer then sees a variety of pictures on the walls, clearly showing that Jefferies is a photographer. The state that the camera is in makes it seem as if Jefferies was injured while taking a picture. The position of a large photograph depicting a crash tells the viewer how Jefferies was injured. Without one word of dialogue, we already know a sizeable amount about the character from one continuous shot. Rear Window is an excellent of example of mise en scene, with the exposition of the photograph telling the viewer something, without it having to be explained to them, while learning more about the character, purely through what appears on the
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