Despite witnessing a murderer covering his traces, at no point does he
feel the urge to get it on film. He uses his camera’s long lens as a telescope,
swapping it for binoculars when things get really intense.
Rear Window‘feels’ photographic throughout, but for reasons that
are thoroughly cinematic. Hitchcock’s idea of pure cinema rested on the
classical theory of montage. He takes the formula of shot / counter shot
and turns it into a looped circuit of looking / action / reaction. A basic
pattern of short, near-still shots dominates the film as the photographer
observes the actions of the murderer and then reacts. The photographer’s
curiosity is merely Hitchcock’s means to a thoroughly cinematic end. If
proof were needed that photography was not really Hitchcock’s subject,
consider the bits of photographic activity that we do see inRear Window,
which are odd indeed. In the film’s opening pan we glimpse a framed
photo – taken from the middle of a racetrack – of two cars crashing.
A tyre is hurtling towards the camera, presumably destined to hospitalize
the photographer. In the same pan we see a crushed camera, then James
Stewart’s leg in plaster. A real photo of the crash would have been
impossible to make and this image is clearly a montage. It is a quick
expository device and its realism is not Hitchcock’s concern. Later, the
photojournalist consults a box of transparencies. They are the only
photos he has taken of the courtyard and they record no action at all.
He notices that plants in a flowerbed have grown shorter over a period of
days, leading him to presume a body has been buried there. (No account
is given of why he took such banal shots.) Then in the film’s denouement
the murderer spots the watching photographer and comes over to his
apartment to confront him. As he enters the photographer attempts to
slow his approach by firing flashbulbs at him repeatedly in the dark.
The strobes temporarily blind him, deferring the moment of confron-
tation. Again, no actual photograph is taken.
From this perspective we can also return to Antonioni’sBlow-up. This
film too features a photographer experiencing in extreme form a similar
social disconnection. It is also a film centred on a murder and it feels
particularly photographic. It would do so even without the extended
fashion shoots and darkroom scenes. In contrast to Hitchcock’s montage,
Antonioni’s long takes assume an almost photographic stare at the surface 115
102 Rear Window(Alfred Hitchcock, 1954),
frames.
over: 103Blow-up(Michelangelo Antonioni,
1966), frames.