Free How to Watch a Movie by David Thomson Page B

that exploits our urge to see. But the spectacle has been set up with seeing in mind, so the factual strand is overlaid with fictional intent. The Thorwalds fit Jeff’s imagination. Mrs. Thorwald (Irene Winston) is harsh-voiced,with red-ginger hair and strained features. She is so far from the loveliness of girlfriend Grace Kelly. And Thorwald (Raymond Burr) is a trapped bear of a man; he feels too bulky for his apartment. He seems powerful, despite his noticeable white hair—and Raymond Burr had dark hair. In other words, the Thorwalds have been cast and dressed to fit Jeff’s bill.
    And while Hitchcock, more than most directors, is obsessed with particular pointed seeing, he organizes the seen thing to the point of claustrophobia. We are not in a real Manhattan courtyard, where fickle weather, stray birds, and unexpected and irrelevant incidents may occur. We are looking at an elaborate set (built in Los Angeles) where fate has been taken in hand. When Grace Kelly does something brave (like going over to the Thorwald apartment when it is empty to search for the wife’s wedding ring), there is a shot of Jeff looking at her in which we realize he sees her in a new light. She isn’t simply an empty-headed beauty. She has the right stuff. He will marry her—even if some husbands kill their wives. (Actually, the panorama of the courtyard presents several different aspects of marriage: the honeymooners behind drawn blinds; the sexpot dancer who has many gentleman callers while her husband is in the military; the elderly couple who exist in terms of their dog; two lonely people who long for companionship; the Thorwalds; and Jeff himself, happy enough to have Lisa stay the night but reluctant to be tied down.)
    Even in 1954, the courtyard in Rear Window never felt like an actual place. Hitchcock built it for convenience and to facilitate shooting as the plan of a place. That’s how “décor” is a distillation of meaning or a caption, as well as a location. Hitch was not impressed by realism, or always mindful of it. All his life he used back projections when even an untrainedaudience could see and feel that artifice. He didn’t care. He chose every item that we would see, arranged and composed them like parts of a theorem because he worked on the principle that everything we could see we would interpret. We are like Jeffries in that way: we see costume, hairstyle, or a way of walking, and we start to read those things into some pattern or meaning. Most movies partake of that logic in a relentless way that is sometimes the opposite of documentary liberty. The whole thing, the view, is a setup.
    And yet, there are moments even in Rear Window when documentary presence breaks through. When Lisa hunts for that ring, and when Thorwald starts to return, the suspense is based on the spatial reality, the way we see Thorwald and Lisa in the same apartment, with her life under threat. When Lisa flutters her hands behind her back to show Jeff—she knows he is watching—the ring she had found and put on her own finger, there is an insouciance, a cockiness, an impudent grace about the way she does it that is just Kelly; it’s what we love about her. Now, Hitch was directing her, and he might have directed her more closely. But if you recast Lisa with Kim Novak (another Hitchcock actress of that moment), I think the gesture would be more awkward, more shy, more afraid, maybe. This is speculation, but it is a way of suggesting how many unique, natural things there can be—pieces of documentary, if you like—in any contrived and controlled movie.
    But the moment Lisa has waggled her fingers, freedom is brushed aside by willful selection. For Thorwald notices the gesture, and traces the line of sight back to the apartment where Jeff is watching. He gazes into the film’s camera with an unforgettable mixture of reproach and malice. It is the first time anyone in the courtyard has