Eli Solt

“One final thing I have to do... and then I'll be free of the past.” - Scottie, Vertigo

It is commonly understood that Alfred Hitchcock was an auteur: a film director whose personal influence and artistic control over his or her films are so great that he or she may be regarded as their author and whose films may be regarded collectively as a body of work sharing common themes or techniques and expressing an individual style or vision (Oxford English Dictionary).

Not only were suspenseful narratives a common plot throughout his filmography, but a variety of motifs and recurring thematic elements appear through strings of his films as well. One aspect of auteur theory that I don’t believe gets analyzed enough is the progression of a director over the course of his/her career; more specifically, the progression of that director’s personal understanding of certain recurring thematic ideas that present themselves over and over in their work.

One particular thematic element from Hitchcock’s films that I wish to explore in this essay is that of voyeurism, the “look,” or the male gaze. Voyeuristic tendencies appear to be rather common in Hitchcock’s characters (often protagonists) and the look itself (both that of the characters and of the audience) was a motif that was addressed and explored by Hitchcock in several films. The two most significant films to explore this theme are Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958). Both films star James Stewart as the lead protagonist whose desire to look and whose disgust with his dismal reality leads to his involvement in shady business that brings excitement and danger into his life.

While there is little to no evidence to suggest that these two films share the same universe or are in any way narratively intertwined, I wish to suggest that they are deeply connected thematically. While both are highly centered on the male gaze (as well as its consequences), female transformation, cinematic identification, and the concept of mobility, the two films offer very different perspectives on each of these themes. While I will focus primarily on Rear Window and Vertigo (the two films that appear to be the most closely connected), I will also analyze the thematic connections with Hitchcock films that came before and after these two, namely Rope, Psycho, and The Birds. In this essay, I will argue that Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a direct thematic continuation of Rear Window, not only re-evaluating the previous film’s critique and understanding of the themes of voyeurism and the presence of the male gaze, but also revealing Hitchcock’s personal changing opinions and contextualizations of those themes over the course of four years.

***

To begin comparing how both Rear Window and Vertigo address these themes, it is important to start at the very beginning of both films. Both contain an opening credits sequence with the credits visually overlaid on top of an image. In Rear Window, the image is the blinds of Jefferies’s rear window being rolled up by an “invisible hand.” After the blinds have been lifted, the camera pushes in as if to “fly” through the window out into the courtyard. However, before the camera is able to break the plane of the window, there is a cut and the film jumps into the next shot. The camera’s inability to pierce the plane of the window establishes the theme of audience identification with Jefferies. Throughout the film, we, like Jefferies, will be unable to leave the apartment and our perspective will be limited to what we can see out the rear window. More simply, this opening shot also establishes the idea that we will be voyeurs throughout the rest of the film, watching out the window like Jefferies while also watching Jefferies himself.          

The opening credits of Vertigo, which appear a bit darker and more sinister, play over the image of a woman’s eye which quickly becomes engulfed by a series of animated abstract shapes and spirals, sucking the audience into the picture itself. The image of the eye introduces the theme of looking in the same way the opening of Rear Window does. The reason this credit sequence feels much darker and more uncomfortable than the previous film is because we, as the audience, are no longer the ones looking––we ourselves are being watched. The eye watching us as we watch the credits roll past show that we (like James Stewart) no longer have the same invisibility (and safety via invisibility) that we did with Rear Window and our gaze will have more serious consequences than it did before. We can no longer hide in the shadows but must confront the real, external world and the things in it that act as the objects of our gaze as cinema viewers.

Moving beyond the credit sequences, we can now look at the two opening scenes of the films. Rear Window begins with a pan of the courtyard: a quick narrative exposition to the characters we will see throughout the rest of the film as well as an establishment of the spatial confines Jefferies’s vision will be limited to. The pan ends with a close-up on Jefferies’s sweaty face as he sits asleep in his wheelchair, facing away from the window. Vertigo begins with an entirely different level of energy. The film opens to an action scene across the roofs of San Francisco buildings as a policeman and Scottie chase a suspect down. Scottie slips, falls and hangs on to a gutter for life. The policeman tries to help him but ends up falling to his death which then becomes the traumatic event which gives Scottie his vertigo. While tonally quite different, the two opening scenes act in very similar ways. They are both somewhat detached from the overall movie. We never return to the same rooftops in Vertigo, nor are we ever given an explanation as to who the criminal or policeman were. In Rear Window, the opening shot is one of the rare moments in the film where we are not viewing the world from Jefferies’s direct perspective. It is a moment where we are getting information that he does not have.

The opening scene in Vertigo is also interesting because it shows us the moment the “injury” occurred. The “injury” is an important element of both films. Jefferies has a broken leg in a cast from photographing an automobile crash while Scottie has a back injury due to the opening action sequence. However, in Rear Window we only see the aftermath of the injury and hear the story. In Vertigo, we are getting extra information (like we do from our disembodied perspective in the beginning of Rear Window) on what exactly happened to Scottie. It is significant because Jefferies’s injury leads to his voyeuristic tendencies and the development of the plot but Scottie becomes free from the burden of his injury almost immediately. His voyeuristic desires spawn from an already established character element of being a detective and watching people for a living (although it can be argued that Jefferies is too as a photographer). In this way, Vertigo’s opening scene tells us to remember Rear Window because its ideas will connect but it also warns us that these themes and the story will not follow the same happy path as its predecessor.

After the opening rooftop scene in Vertigo, we are transported to Midge’s apartment where Scottie is recovering from his injury and we are introduced to the character of Midge. This scene is important because it continues the thematic intention of the opening scene as it connects back to Rear Window while hinting at a different discourse.

Midge’s apartment, through the mise-en-scene and narrative placement is meant to represent Jefferies’s apartment. One of the most prominent connections is that fact that the shades on Midge’s “rear window” are almost identical to the ones in Jefferies’s apartment. This time, the shades are only half-drawn instead of fully open, suggesting that our perspective will be more limited this time. Midge is sitting at her easel, working on a fashion drawing of a woman who has a curious resemblance to Miss Torso, Jefferies’s across-the-courtyard neighbor. This scene opens the film in a very similar way to Rear Window as well. Scottie is sitting in a chair with his back to the window like Jefferies does. We also see him with the injury for the first time. Jefferies is burdened by his huge cast while Scottie is enduring the struggle of wearing a corset and using a cane. Both protagonists wish desperately to be free of their physical injuries (They also share the same inconveniences. Just as Jefferies struggles to itch his leg under his cast, Scottie says, “I’ll be able to scratch myself like anyone else tomorrow”). They also both mention the time frame in which they will be free: Scottie says that the Corset “comes off tomorrow” and Jefferies says that his cast will be off in a week. The similarities between spaces and openings is a message from Hitchcock suggesting a continuation of the exploration of an idea but that it is to be played out in a different way. Unlike Jefferies, Scottie soon does become free of his physical injury, thus, as I will explore later on, his voyeurism is not limited by space and can be exploited fully on the outside world. This shows that we will be moving from the enclosed space of the apartment (an internal, mental space) and seeing the reality and consequences of Jefferies’s gaze played out in the real, external world.

That idea of the internal versus the external lends itself to a thematic difference in the films: immobility versus mobility. Robert Stam acknowledges the importance of Jefferies’s immobility in Rear Window: “The wheelchair-ridden Jefferies exemplifies this situation of retinal activity and enforced immobility; he is indeed, as Lisa remarks in another context, ‘traveling but going nowhere’” (Stam 202). As a contrast, Scottie’s story is overtly marked by his near excessive mobility. For almost the entire time he follows Madeleine, he is traveling in his car (his front windshield acting as similar voyeuristic barrier as the rear window) and when he isn’t, he follows her quickly by foot. To save Madeleine from her attempted suicide, Scottie must jump into the San Francisco bay and perform an act of great strength to save her. When he tries to save her again, he must climb several flights of stairs. His impediment in this instance is nothing on the physical level but more on the mental: his vertigo and fear of heights (The climax of Scottie’s freedom of movement is marked by the shot in the dream where he falls into an infinite void). On the other hand, when Lisa is in danger, Jefferies physically cannot do anything to save her despite nothing blocking him from doing so mentally. While Scottie is quite mobile physically, the mobility of his mind is more limited. Jefferies is exactly the opposite. Hitchcock’s exploration of this theme seems to reveal a kind of growth in understanding that physical limitations aren’t the only kind of injury or handicap that can limit someone.

Deeply connected to the idea of mobility are the films representations of the internal and the external world, particularly in their relationship to the effects and consequences of the male protagonist’s voyeuristic actions. It goes without saying that Rear Window is more focused on the internal while Vertigo explores the opposite. Almost all the narrative developments in Rear Window occur within internal or private spaces. Detective Doyle even says at one point: “People do a lot of things in private they couldn’t possibly explain in public.” In this film, Hitchcock is concerned with the private lives of people and the ethics of viewing into those private spaces. Vertigo is built on this strange behavior occurring in public or external places. At no point during his following of Madeleine does Scottie ever spy on her while she is in a private space. He never sees her until she is outside her apartment, she drives on public roads, goes to a public flower shop, a church, a museum, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Even when he sees her in her hotel room, she is standing at the open window, not trying to hide from the outside world.

Jefferies exists, almost purely, in an internal space, where he is free and relatively safe to watch as he pleases. Robert Stam suggests that “the progressive breakdown of Jeff’s voyeuristic passivity is further marked by” (Stam 205) the moment when he is touched indirectly by Thorwald’s look when he is spotted for the first time. This is a shocking moment because his safe, internal space has been discovered and has now become a part of the larger external world. Thorwald’s look is also jolting for the viewer because it breaks our sense of safety as the voyeurs in the theater (he is looking directly at us, the audience). A similar moment occurs in Vertigo: the flashback sequence where the truth of the church murder is revealed. It is an interesting connection because before the sequence happens, Judy turns to look toward the camera (though not directly at it) in a similar way as when Thorwald looks at us in Rear Window. In this flashback, the audience, not Scottie (at this moment), is shamed for looking and assuming based on that look. This connects to the opening credit sequence with the eye watching us. Our expectations based on what we thought we’ve seen were subverted, suggesting a lack of truth and possibility of knowledge through means of sight.

Both films also explore the idea of loneliness and isolation in the modern world. While Scottie is freer to move around the world than Jefferies is, both characters are very isolated from external communities. Both characters look into the external world or the world of normal social structures but both usually prefer not to participate in it. When the dog is discovered dead in Rear Window, the dog owner screams: “Neighbors care if someone lives or dies!” Here, Hitchcock is saying that the external world is a community that is built on trust and respect and a group that works together. Most of his main characters, however, lack this communal participation. Robin Wood writes of the shot of Midge walking down the empty hallway in Vertigo: “…the corridor image takes on a universal symbolism, connecting all three principal characters, exposing that point at which every human being is essentially alone, beyond the help of others” (Wood 119). This is another significant difference between the two films. Scottie is “beyond the help of others” but Jefferies is able to take the support of his friends and to some degree “an outside community” and have a happy ending.

There are very different consequences for the two male leads for their voyeurism due to the difference in the internal and external applications of it. Wood accounts of Jefferies’s recovery and happy ending due to his entrance into that external community. “Only gradually does Jefferies realize that he too forms part of the larger social space. His final fall into the courtyard, in this sense, signals his incorporation into that space” (Stam 207).

It is also significant to note the differences as Jefferies falls from the edge he hangs onto while Scottie never falls from the gutter at the beginning of Vertigo, suggesting his inability to enter into normal social spaces. With Jefferies, not only does he become part of a larger space, he also solves a murder. “…the final effects of Jefferies’ voyeurism are almost entirely admirable. If he hadn’t spied on his neighbors, a murderer would have gone free…” (Wood 100). Jefferies is rewarded for his voyeurism when he breaks his other leg because he gets to sit and watch people for another six weeks. In Rear Window, his “look” was almost entirely positive as it solved the murder. In Vertigo, Scottie is punished at the end because of his initial willingness to spy on Madeleine. His punishment is not only the collapse of his mental state and sanity, but the death of the woman he loves. This shows another point in Hitchcock’s evolution in understanding the effects of looking. In the end, Rear Window suggests that it is okay to look because you might solve a crime whereas in Vertigo, it leads to nothing but destruction, suffering, and death.

The final point of comparison between the two films that is important to address, is the thematic concept of dreams versus reality and the protagonists understanding of their position within these two spaces. Both Jefferies and Scottie share a strong dislike for reality or at least the mundane and banal aspects of life. Jefferies seeks adventure at every turn and fears the concept of settling down and getting married. Scottie works in the police force and is easily convinced (because he wants to believe) by Gavin Elster that ghosts are real.

The first dialogue heard in Rear Window comes from a radio voice saying: “Men are you over 40? When you wake up in the morning, do you feel tired and run down? Do you have that listless feeling?” This sets up the idea of the protagonists wishing to escape from reality in both films. Jefferies jumps on the opportunity to discover something sinister happening in an apartment across from him and creates a murder mystery where he is the lead detective. Scottie is a detective but further decides to uncover a mystery of the dead and follow a girl he knows little about. “The ‘wandering’ theme…it is natural to link it with Scottie’s expressed lack of purpose (his ‘doing nothing’) and hence with the ‘vertigo’ idea” (Wood 113). In both films, the protagonist has nothing to do, one because of a mental limitation and one because of physical limitation. In turn, they both take the opportunity of being voyeuristic and watching others which gives them purpose. In both instances, this desire to look is predicated on the desire to escape a boring reality.

Specific formal elements of the films further explore this juxtaposition between dreams and reality. For one, the soundtracks work in different ways. The music in Rear Window is almost entirely diegetic (coming frequently from the piano player) while non-diegetic music is layered over most of Vertigo. The effect: establishing a feeling that the world of Rear Window is much more based in reality whereas the world of Vertigo is like a dream. The visual elements reinforce this idea as the camera lens gets foggy when Scottie enters the garden and the green glow of the neon sign in Judy’s hotel room seems like something from a fantasy. The biggest example might be Scottie’s actual dream. This avant-garde, surreal sequence distinctly separates this film from the visual nature of Rear Window. This sequence simply has no place in the visual style of the latter. Yet, despite all of this, the thematic messages portrayed in each film contradict these visual ideas. Scottie follows Madeline because she represents something beyond his normal life. She is a mystery that could lead to something deeper. Jefferies wants something like this too as he wants there to be a murder because it is an escape from the mundane. In Rear Window, the hero’s desires are satisfied and proved true. In Vertigo, Hitchcock subverts this expectation, showing us that that is not how the real world works. He then punishes both the audience and Scottie for believing that. In this manner, despite its dreamlike nature, Vertigo offers a more realistic sense of reality and life in the external world whereas Rear Window is actually more like the fantasy or a dream. Vertigo shows that one cannot live in one’s own reality forever without consequences.

Finally, while Rear Window and Vertigo share the greatest thematic connection, these two films are also connected to several other Hitchcock works around the same time. One of these predates both films: Rope. Like Rear Window, Rope is an experimental exploration of filmic space, camera movement in tight spaces, and claustrophobic, limited viewer identification. D. A. Miller says in his essay “Hitchcock’s Understyle: A Too-Close View of Rope” that “Rope is the dark shadow of Rear Window” (Miller 12). Both are set in city apartments, focus on a murder, and star James Stewart as the man who must catch on to the subtle clues to catch the murderer.

“In [Rear Window] our voyeurism, and Stewart’s, is morally justified: we suspect we’ve seen a murder but we’re not sure – and the only way to uncover the truth is to keep watching. When we watch Rope, however, we know exactly what kind of sickness we’re staring at and the question is how long we can bear to look” (Miller 13). The film opens in a similar way to Rear Window and Vertigo in terms of the opening scene being a different kind of identification than the rest of the film. The credits are overlaid on a bird’s-eye shot of a city street after which the camera slowly pans until it finally rests on a window that is covered by curtains on the inside (also similar to the opening shot of Psycho). This opening shot is quite like the opening pan in Rear Window in that it is the first and only shot until near the end of the film where our identification with the main character (s) is broken. It is also the only time the camera is outside of the apartment in the whole film. When Rupert fires the gun out of the window near the end, it is the only other time when the audience is connected to the outside world in any way (the sounds of diegetic voices come up from the street). This is the moment where the characters fall back into reality and connect with the larger social world in the same way that Jefferies’s does when he falls into the courtyard. The elements of voyeurism in Rope are basic and underdeveloped but it makes sense as this film predates the other films of Hitchcock’s that explore it more fully. Not only is the opening panning shot extremely voyeuristic, Rupert’s character is only capable of gaining information through the act of looking (and listening) at others while they are unaware of it. It is how he solves the murder, just like he does (in an exaggerated fashion) in Rear Window.

Psycho and The Birds are perhaps the most loosely connected films to the previous three, largely due to different thematic spaces explored. They nonetheless both offer a continuation of the ideas of voyeurism and the male gaze. Instead of James Stewart playing the lead who the audience identifies with, the audience must now identify with female leads who become the subject of the male gaze.

These films are also much more violent than the previous three. Instead of people getting strangled or falling from heights, characters are now getting stabbed, blown up in fiery explosions, and eaten alive by birds. These two films seem to represent the final and perhaps devastating consequences of the male gaze upon the external world and more significantly: women. In this manner, we can begin to see these five films represent a linear progression of Hitchcock’s thematic vision and personal development of these ideas, particularly the consequences of voyeurism. Rope and Rear Window show positive consequences of the male gaze in a world that is much more of a fantasy and much more internalized. Vertigo explores the negative consequences and is still internalized within Scottie but begins to understand the real world consequences upon others. Finally, Psycho and The Bird explore the extreme, extrapolated consequences of the gaze upon the real world; a world without meaning or hope.

The thematic connection between Rear Window and Vertigo is evident. The two films represent an auteur director’s attempt at grappling with difficult themes at different points in his career. Not only do they visually and narratively explore the consequences of voyeurism and the male gaze but they also suggest a more interconnected and constantly evolving network of themes within Hitchcock’s own work.

As with any criticism of auteur theory analysis, it goes without saying that these connections could be entirely coincidental. Yet, with their number and directness, it seems unlikely that they were implemented by the master of suspense completely unintentionally. What Hitchcock is trying to say through this evolution of themes is unclear. Clearly, there is some message or idea being explored about the nature of cinema itself. As Robert Stam suggests, Jefferies is meant to represent a director himself (as can be said of many Hitchcock protagonists). In Vertigo, Madeline says her dreams are like walking down a corridor of darkness and if she reaches the darkness she’ll die. Perhaps, it’s like walking into the darkness of cinema, away from reality. Just like Jefferies and Scottie, we want to believe we are a part of an important narrative and not just another cog in a machine that is our mundane world. Perhaps Hitchcock’s progression then, is an understanding of the banality of the real world. He is, possibly, suggesting that we should turn away from cinema and face reality because if we get caught up in the movies, we will get lost in our own fantasies.

Works Cited

"auteur, n. and adj." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2019, www.oed.com/view/Entry/249941. Accessed 22 April 2019.

Belton, John. “The Space of Rear Window.” MLN, vol. 103, no. 5, 1988, pp. 1121–1138. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2905203.

“Exhibitionism / Voyeurism / The Look.” Hitchcock's Motifs, by Michael Walker, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2005, pp. 164–178. JSTOR,  www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46mtpf.22.

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. The Birds. Universal Pictures, 1963.

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Psycho. Paramount Pictures, 1960.

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Rear Window. Paramount Pictures, 1954.

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Rope. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1948.

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Vertigo. Paramount Pictures, 1958.

"Hitchcock, Alfred." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. Oxford University Press, January 01, 2013. Oxford Reference. Date Accessed 26 Apr. 2019   <http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199764358.001.0001/acref-9780199764358-e-311>.

Miller, D. A. “Hitchcock’s Understyle: A Too-Close View of Rope.” Representations, vol. 121, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1–30. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2013.121.1.1.

Stam, Robert, and Roberta Pearson. “Hitchcock's Rear Window: Reflexivity and the Critique of Voyeurism.” A Hitchcock Reader, edited by Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague, 2nd ed., Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009, pp. 199–211.

Toles, George E. “Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window as Critical Allegory.” Boundary 2, vol. 16, no. 2/3, 1989, pp. 225–245. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/303316.

Wood, Robin. “Male Desire, Male Anxiety: The Essential Hitchcock.” A Hitchcock Reader, edited by Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague, 2nd ed., Blackwell Publishing Ltd,    2AD, pp. 223–233.

Wood, Robin. “Rear Window.” Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Revised ed., Columbia University Press, 202AD, pp. 100–107.

Wood, Robin. “Vertigo.” Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Revised ed., Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 108–130.

SOCIAL

LEAVE A COMMENT