Review: Rear Window

            Rear Window is a suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock about an injured photographer who is wheelchair bound and resorts to spying on his neighbors for entertainment. The main characters are L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies and his girlfriend Lisa Fremont. One day, while innocently studying his neighbors Jeff observes one of the residents, Lars Thorwald, behaving suspiciously and speculates that Thorwald has murdered his wife.

The editing employed in Rear Window is one of the most powerful tools used in the film. As the audience, we can only see what Jeff is seeing through his camera lens, which leads us to believe that his suspicions of Mrs. Thorwald being viciously murdered by her own husband are accurate. Rear Window also uses the Kuleshov Effect, quickly cutting to the scenes unfolding before Jeff’s eyes and also our eyes. Throughout the film we

share Jeff’s obsession thoughts, and hypothesis, in this way his assumptions don’t seem as crazy and outlandish; we understand why he is jumping these conclusions because we are also jumping there ourselves. We know spying on people is inappropriate and violating, but when you catch a person doing an evil act is it still so wrong? Do the ends justify the means?

The theme in Rear Window is Good vs. Evil. Jeff, our protagonist is good in his core, and while spying on people is unacceptable, we do end up revealing evil in the form of deadly Mr. Thorwald.