Free How to Watch a Movie by David Thomson Page A

series of 24 ?) If you imagine the hapless observer who has to study hours and years of that footage, you know seeing could be soporific—until a stray coyote or a terrorist sidles through the space. You set up a camera, you adjust its lens, its focus, and its exposure (these are antique habits now) and it will “take” whatever is in front of it. We still trust that documentary fidelity, even though we know it is easy for thecinematic system to manufacture imagery that has no provenance or authenticity and insert it in the space.
    But human beings don’t watch in the way of a camera. Go to the door, or the street, or the beach and try taking in the totality of what there is to be seen. You can’t do it, for our attention notices particular things: the coyote, or the white goose. If that pretty girl (whatever pretty is) walks by, you notice her, you look at her, you focus on her, and you pan with her walk. You hope you’re seeing her (as in looking into her) and you would not mind if she noticed that. For you would like to earn her attention. If attention has to be paid, it is encouraged by being noticed. “That guy was looking at me again today,” she may tell a friend. To which the friend replies, in a take-it-or-leave-it way, “Maybe he fancies you.”
    Then there’s a look on the girl’s face that’s so hard to describe—hopeful, dubious, wistful, ready—so we’re going to need an actress. You can say to the actress, Well, tomorrow, when we do that scene, how would you play it? She may reply, You’re the director, what do you want me to do? And in intriguing ways, this discussion is what a real girl might puzzle over while deciding whether she should look up at the watcher and give the hint of a smile, a germ of recognition, or of being noticed?
    Any work that involves a camera must have the animating impetus of someone who watches and wants to see. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) James Stewart plays a photojournalist, L. B. Jeffries, confined to his New York apartment because of a broken leg. He was injured taking one of the dangerous pictures for which he is famous. But now he is idle, bored, doing nothing except entertaining his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly); resist her suggestions about their gettingmarried or have a massage administered by the dry, tart Stella (Thelma Ritter). What would you do?
    Well, you might read a lot of books or listen to music or watch television (this was 1954—he could have seen the Army–McCarthy hearings, that crucial step in Joe McCarthy’s downfall), but movies in the 1950s felt it was tasteless to show a TV. So Jeff starts to look out of his window at the courtyard and the several apartments that are visible. He is a casual snoop, an everyday voyeur, just a laid-up cameraman, restless and amused by the lives he sees. He has a carefree narcissism in that, while staring at these strangers, he never realizes they can see him.
    None of these people sharing the courtyard are his friends. But then his nearly vacant survey notices something—like that man in the doorway in Las Meninas . In one apartment opposite him, a man and his wife are always arguing—this is enough to convince Jeff not to get married. But then the wife is no longer there and the husband is behaving suspiciously. The photographer starts to watch or keep watch. He doesn’t go to bed but stays in his chair in the dark, drifting off to sleep then waking—is he dreaming? Or has his empty-headed looking turned into a vigil so that now he sees enough to make him think the white-haired man across the way (his name is Lars Thorwald) has murdered his wife?
    His policeman friend (Wendell Corey) mocks Jeff’s theory, but it turns out to be right. As I said, this is a movie made in 1954 by Alfred Hitchcock, and nothing to complain about. Its great entertainment is also a study in watching that teaches us to look closely and