Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" -- can you help me understand something about the plot?
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Pachy (
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September 17th, 2013
I just finished watching “Rear Window” for about the 100th time in my life and noticed something for the very first time. Jeff, the wheelchair-bound voyeur played by Jimmy Stewart, is a professional photographer, and throughout the movie he uses a camera with a telescopic lens to watch a man in his apartment across the courtyard whom he believes murdered his wife. Yet… he never takes photos of the man’s suspicious actions, many of which, it seems to me, would convince Jeff’s skeptical detective friend much sooner that a murder had indeed been committed.
Okay, I know this is the script’s plot device to keep the movie suspenseful to the end, but is that the only reason Jeff never takes even one photo? Would such furtive evidence collection have been unlawful?
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9 Answers
Maybe Grace Kelly refused to buy him film.
Film was expensive and he was unable to work, so he couldn’t afford it?
I do think it may have been a cultural thing against spying on a neighbor and respecting privacy, since they didn’t feel a need to explain it in the plot. Of course nowadays there is no such thing as privacy and people whip out their phones and start recording evidence immediately.
Or…aside from the obvious need to draw out the drama, perhaps his voyeurism is so in the moment, he is so captivated, that by the time he truly assimilates what he is witnessing the Kodak moment history.
Maybe he thought the click of the camera would be heard by Raymond Burr. He was just using the camera’s long lens to spy and didn’t want to get caught. It certainly was never made clear.
None of what he witnessed was worthy of photographing, circumstantial at best.
He even doubts his suspicions for large parts of the film, putting them down to voyeuristic boredom.
Even when he persuades Grace to illegally enter Thorwald’s apartment & Burr catches her in the act, the police are called, but no photo
Fine movie though, not my fave Hitchcock, that goes to Strangers on a Train.
One of my favorite movies. I think that he doesn’t take the pictures because they wouldn’t show anything. Just his speculation. Still Grace is such a princess in the movie-how could anyone not love it. Gone too soon.
I’ve thought about this also and I have explained it to myself these ways 1) as @ucme said, there was nothing worthy of taking a picture of and 2) The light and the angles shooting through glass might have made it impossible to get a good picture.
Glad I asked. Terrific comments from everybody. Thank you.
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