PROS
- it builds suspense, because we don't know what's going on until the end of the movie.
- it makes us identify with the main character, and therefore we care more about him. When he is in danger, or hurt, we feel it more.
CONS
- all the action takes place in one room! with some views into the courtyard.
- no variety of scenery to keep the viewer interested.
- harder to show what's going on.
By watching this movie, you'll see the ways that the director overcame these difficulties and took full advantage of the benefits.
scene 1
The music during the opening credits is upbeat and exciting. It doesn't match the idea of an invalid confined to his room. And that's exactly why it's important. This invalid doesn't want to be an invalid. He is a photojournalist. He is an adventurer. He's been forced to stay in due to a recent accident. As a matter of fact, the whole reason he got into the accident is because he is adventurous. But you don't have to be adventurous to understand this character. The important part is that his dreams and desires are exciting. The mind, our thoughts, our fantasies, can have its own adventures. It's this adventurous mind that creates all the action of this movie.
So notice, we're not looking into a lonely room, we're looking out of the room, at the window, and the blinds roll up like curtains. And yes, they are like curtains, because we don't see anyone drawing them up. They really do seem to be going up of their own accord.
And look what a vivid world they open on! Birds flying around! And what a complicated world, a world full of more windows. Each window represents another perspective. Each window sees the world in a different way. Notice how the music shifts from one window to the next. Music is a powerful tool for the movie maker.
And now here's a classic example of how camera work can show you an idea. The camera pulls back into the room, but notice the main character is sleeping. Not only that, he is facing away from the window. Visually, this gives us the idea that he's not seeing this world, but instead, he is dreaming this world. This is a good example of foreshadowing, because later we'll see how much he thinks about this world out there, how much he theorizes about it and tries to explain it. But is he really understanding it? He's so quick to judge everybody and everything. Maybe instead of understanding this world, he is putting his own ideas into it. This is not only an important theme, it is crucial to the plot.
Quickly and silently, we are introduced to some of the characters of this world, which I'm going to start calling Windowland. Here they are, in order:
- Songwriter
- Fire escape couple
- Miss Torso (she'll get this name later)
But that's not all he does. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the director conveys a lot of information in these few moments. For example, we get a look at the alley. This alley will become very important. It is a glimpse at the world beyond the courtyard. It becomes a connection point, a gateway, between Windowland and the rest of the world. Something else is established as well: the heat. The hazy heat of summer is very important to this movie for a number of reasons:
- its languorous quality well befits a world of dreams and desires.
- it is the heat that causes most people to keep their blinds up and their windows open, which is essential to the plot.
- Combined with future shots of a thermometer, we get the feeling of a fever, in which one has dreams and hallucinations.
- the heat is sometimes difficult to tolerate. It can cause tempers to flare. It might even lead to murder.
Once again we pull back through the main character's head, but this time we keep going. We see he has a broken leg, the reason he's stuck here, then we pull over to a broken camera, which gives us a clue to how he got hurt and what his job is, and then over to his photographs, the end result of his job. Notice the theme of destruction continues with pictures of exploding cars. It's often a powerful effect in a movie to continue a visual theme through various means. Not only do we know how the main character (Jeffrey) got into his current state, we also get more foreshadowing of the violence to come.
Notice the mix of subtlety and force here. We get only hints of something, but we get them over and over again in different ways. This can create a powerful feeling in your audience even if they don't realize where it's coming from.
Now, the next picture we see is a negative. Notice how this is also like a kind of destruction. The image is destroyed through inversion. But then we see the positive version. Not only that, we see it on a magazine cover, repeated many times over. In this way destruction leads to creation. This is a powerful theme in literature and religion and myth. But let's get back to the movie. The thing about a good movie is that it will interest people so much that they will find many themes in it, themes the director may never have considered. The director's job is simply to make the movie good and interesting to begin with.
The scene fades to black. It is these fades that I will be using to mark scene changes.
scene 2
Jeffrey is on the phone to a friend. This phone call tells us some background about Jeffrey, but also tells us that next week his cast is coming off. He's very happy at the thought, but really it will be a kind of loss. This will be the end of Windowland as he rushes off to his next adventure. But not just Windowland, as we'll see later.
This is also the first scene in which we see Thorwald (he'll get this name later). Notice how subtly he is shown to us. No hint of his future importance. It's important to surprise your audience! Look at my examples of foreshadowing above. They do give the audience an idea of what to expect, but nothing specific. If you can create a feeling or a mood in the audience instead of any kind of foreknowledge, then you're doing well by them.
Now we see Jeffrey trying to scratch an itch he can't get to. This seemingly silly little escapade does some important things. It foreshadows how helpless he is. It shows how he uses tools to solve his problems. It references the dreams and desires of his Windowland.
Thorwald is in his flower garden. His attention to this flower garden will become very important to the plot. Once again, we get a subtle look at it, but one that establishes the idea for us.
Stella, his nurse, enters. She accuses Jeffrey of being a "peeping Tom." This accusation is important, because there are ethical issues to this movie and to the idea of peeking at other people's business. She also predicts that trouble is going to come of this. But it's all done in a whimsical matter. Sometimes using a joke is a great way to get an idea across subtly without the audience realizing it's being given a clue. And speaking of jokes, they joke about how Jeffrey loves his Windowland people "like a father." This reinforces the idea that he is being creative, that he is pushing his own agenda on the world out there. He is NOT and NEVER merely an observer!
Stella massages Jeffrey. Here we are given a demonstration of his physical helplessness. This entire adventure will be a mental and emotional one for him. This is certainly important to the theme, but also to the plot, and to the suspense of that plot. A helpless hero! How will he prevail? Get your audience asking questions like that and you've hooked them!
They discuss Lisa. This is now the second presage of Lisa before her actual appearance. First she was on the magazine cover. Now she is the object of conversation. Notice Stella's next accusation. Her first is that he is a "peeping Tom." The next accusation is that he thinks too much. This encapsulates him perfectly. He stares out his window and he analyzes what's there. But she's talking about his relationship to Lisa. When you can get characters talking about one thing when they're really talking about something else, you can liven up your story. The thing is, these issues of peeping and overthinking really will affect his relationship to Lisa, as we will see.
It is at this point, while they are talking about one relationship, that we will see a new couple in Windowland. Keep an eye out for these: connections between Windowland people and the main characters. It's human nature for us to connect to what we are observing. Does that put into question our ability to observe? Yes, but it can also make us more intense, more compassionate observers.
This new couple is being shown their apartment. After the landlord leaves, they go back outside and enter again, this time he carries her over the threshold. The reality of their entrance is replaced by a fantasy. Obviously, this is the couple creating their own fantasy, but it also evokes the possibility that Jeffrey might be imposing his fantasies on the people around him. Like I said, this is important to the plot as well as the theme.
And then, just as interestingly, the couple close their blinds. The suggestion here is that some things really are too private, and that's a good thing. It's good to close the blinds sometimes. There will be a constant shifting in this movie between private and public, with intense private moments, entirely public and communal moments, and everything in between. When you do that as a director, create a struggle of some sort and then keep shifting the balance, you can create a kind of symphony, a rhythm that will keep your audience awake and interested through the entire movie.
Here we get Stella's third accusation: "Window shopper." In other words, a shopper who doesn't really buy anything, doesn't even enter the store. This evokes Jeffrey's isolation. Not only is that an important theme, it also helps the plot because it makes us question his judgment yet again. Could his theorizing just be an attempt to reach into a world he is isolated from?
scene 3
It's night-time. Jeffrey's face is illuminated by Windowland, as though it is feeding him dreams. We see a shadow creep up his body. But notice, the shadow is on his dark side! Who can create a shadow from darkness? Once again, we are subtly forced to question what is real and what is a dream. It also suggests that this figure might really be from Windowland even though it appears to be inside the room. But who is this dream?
It's Lisa. We finally see her, and her face fills the screen. The scene gets choppy here with close-ups of the two. When they kiss, it is in slow motion. Is he really awake or still dreaming? She asks him how she is. It's good to have dialogue that shows the character of the person speaking it. In this case, we have someone who is caring and compassionate, but that devoted concern of hers will get her into trouble later (and move the plot along)!
Now notice his question. He asks who she is. Clearly, he's joking, but this only reinforces the notion that she is a dream. There's a lot I could write about how she introduces herself, turning on a light for each of her names, but let's just say that this simple visual trick is very catchy. By now, the audience is quite sure how important this character is. Let's skip to what she does next: she brings in food (and a waiter!) from a restaurant. In other words, she brings the outside world in to him. This idea will become much more important later.
A dramatic change of camera occurs. They are now backgrounded by Windowland, which has turned red! This world of dreams and desire will be crucial to their relationship. And now in their conversation we get their main conflict: he wants to go out on adventures while she wants him to stay in the city and be her husband. She suggests that he be a portrait photographer or a fashion photographer. Now notice that she is projecting her fantasies onto him! And just as she is doing this, he notices Miss Lonelyhearts back in Windowland. And what is she doing? Making a fantasy! She is having a fantasy date, preparing her makeup, setting the table. The climactic moment of this fantasy is when she makes a toast and Jeffrey toasts back to her. Each one is having his/her own fantasy and here they are colliding, or rather, clinking.
But once Miss Lonelyhearts gives up her fantasy and collapses, crying, Jeffrey feels no sorrow. All he can do is sarcastically compare her to Lisa. But Lisa challenges him. He is just pretending to know what she's like, just like he pretends to know what the people in Windowland are like. This is one of several examples of Windowland people being used like icons or myths, to instruct, to learn from, to compare one's self to. This is the function of characters in literature and movies. Our next fable is Miss Torso who is "juggling wolves." Jeffrey compares her to Lisa as well.
Then we see the closed blinds of the new couple. Jeffrey can't get into their world. This makes them seem particularly virtuous, and safe. But also shows how Jeffrey can't get into a normal, married life. He seems barred from that kind of happiness.
This safety is replaced by the volatile world of Thorwald. Keep in mind that strong contrasts create interest. From the closed-off loving couple, we get a couple in trouble. They are fighting, yelling at each other, hurting each other. She overhears him making a phone call, and laughs at him. The phone is very important to this movie. It is a way for an invalid to reach out of his apartment. It’s a way for Thorwald to reach out of his loveless marriage. It’s a way to organize a murder, and a way to catch a murderer.
Now we go back to the songwriter. By the way, this director likes to appear in his movies, and this is where he appears in this movie. Looking at the songwriter's bookshelf as he plays. This is a simple, placid scene. Sometimes it's good to calm a scene down a bit before it ends, so it doesn't interfere with the next scene.
But also, as the scene ends, we get Jeffrey's accusation at Lisa. "Perfect, as always," he says. She is too perfect. She is, in other words, a dream.
scene 4
The unsolvable argument between Jeffrey and Lisa continues. He mentions living out of one suitcase. This verbal statement will later be answered by Lisa with a visual statement. He mentions wearing a raincoat in Brazil. This image will be echoed by Thorwald in the next scene. This is a very effective technique for a movie, a dialogue between words and images, but we’ll get to that later. At the end of the argument, Lisa pretends to break up with him. Pretending is an important theme of the movie, and it closely ties to the plot. As a moviemaker, you want to stress those themes that also relate to the action. It’s good for the action and it’s good for the themes.
Jeffrey turns back to the window. There’s something disturbing about how dark it is. Windowland is closed. The blinds are down. There is nothing to see, nothing to peek into. That’s when the ultimate action of the movie occurs, in blindness. We hear a scream and a crash. Jeffrey looks helplessly at the closed windows. What follows is a succession of short scenes, as though Jeffrey cannot escape this night, as though he is trying to wake up from a bad dream.
scene 5
Jeffrey wakes up to rain. Notice how the impact of the rain is underscored by the couple out on the fire escape. Now they must scramble to move inside. At the same time, it provides some physical comedy. Isn’t it interesting how the mind can hold opposing ideas? Here, at a moment of great tension and worry, we have a comedic scene. This is an important principle, much like cooking where you balance the sweet with the salty. If, as a moviemaker, you stay too long with one mood and never counter it, the movie can feel oppressive, difficult to watch. You’ll find this phenomenon in many supposedly “artistic” movies.
Now we see Thorwald in a raincoat. He is carrying a heavy briefcase. Jeffrey looks at his watch, and so do we. It’s 1:55 AM. This will establish the passage of time, but it also shows us something about Jeffrey. He is now very interested in Thorwald and what he does. Interested enough to time him. This is a visual way for the director to establish Thorwald as the main suspect.
scene 6
We cut to the same watch saying 2:35 AM. This is not very subtle, but it does show that 40 minutes have passed. Thorwald is back carrying his briefcase. Maybe I’m just imagining this, but the case seems lighter now.
Just then, some noise comes from the songwriter’s apartment. Notice that the songwriter is the closest neighbor to Jeffrey, physically, and he will distract Jeffrey throughout the movie. In this scene, the songwriter is drunk and unhappy. He throws his music sheets in a gesture of despair. Jeffrey laughs at his pain. This is the second time that Jeffrey has shown a lack of compassion for the people in Windowland. The struggle to be connected to others, to care, to understand, is one of the most important themes a moviemaker or any artist can portray. In this case, Jeffrey’s inability to care provides an opportunity for character development as well as plot development.
character development
Let me just take a moment to talk about “character development.” You have to be very careful with this idea. It’s very hard to convince the audience that someone has completely changed during the course of a two-hour movie. It does happen occasionally, but there’s something else you can do, like Hitchcock does in this movie. You can simply show the character another way, a better way of being. You can force the character to try it. At the end of the movie, we don’t have any evidence that the character changed, but we are still satisfied, because we know he’s been given that opportunity.
After Jeffrey’s distraction, he sees Thorwald leaving again with his case.
scene 7
Jeffrey wakes from sleep again. Notice that this builds up the sense of sleepiness and dreaminess to this movie. He looks for Thorwald, but now Thorwald’s blinds are closed. He sees Miss Torso with one of her “wolves.” She sends him on his way and is alone. This will echo with something Miss Lonelyhearts does later. These Windowland people not only resonate with Jeffrey’s life, they resonate with each other. It’s another hint at the connections among all people.
Thorwald is back again with his case. Jeffrey falls asleep and Miss Torso shuts off her light. Notice how an internal event, falling asleep, is juxtaposed with an external event, turning off a light. An important theme of this movie is the connection between the internal and external worlds.
scene 8
Jeffrey is sleeping. Morning has finally arrived. The remarkable thing about this scene is that Jeffrey never wakes up. This is the only significant event that we see without Jeffrey seeing it. Since it happens without Jeffrey’s mind imposing meanings on it, does that make it more real or less real? We think it’s more real, but it feels less real. A powerful thing that you can do as a moviemaker is to make your audience’s thoughts conflict with their feelings. What Jeffrey misses is that Thorwald is leaving the apartment with a woman. This missed fact will come back to haunt him. If he had seen it, he would never have pursued Thorwald as a suspect. But remember what we’ve learned from example: the people in Windowland sometimes pretend and create their own false realities.
persistence of vision
Persistence of vision is an optical effect that makes film possible in the first place. A movie isn’t really moving, after all. It’s like a flipbook, one image after another, but our mind pastes it all together and completes the illusion of motion. There are other ways you can take advantage of this ability of the mind. Notice how this scene starts with Jeffrey sleeping and ends with Jeffrey sleeping. Your mind is convinced that he is sleeping through the entire scene, even though we don’t see him for the entire scene. A movie can’t possibly fill in all the gaps, or explain everything, but it doesn’t have to. It can use this quality of the mind to let the mind fill in the gaps. But you need the right kind of correspondences to trigger this mental action. That’s something best learned by... watching movies. Just keep it in the back of your mind. If there’s something you think you can’t shoot for your movie, make it happen off-screen. If you show a door and then show a room, the audience will assume that the room is behind that door. You can save a lot of money with this technique!
scene 9
We see another character, a sculptress. A guy carrying water asks her what she’s working on. She says it’s called “hunger.” Notice that both people have different approaches to the same problem: he sees thirst and he brings water. She sees hunger and makes art about it. She’s trying to understand it instead of fix it. Her sculpture has a big hole in it. Hunger, and all kinds of desire, are a result of something missing within us.
Miss Torso is dancing again. The fire escape couple lets down their dog. Jeffrey is being massaged again, but now he has something to talk about. He’s not so helpless anymore. He has an adventure.
Thorwald’s shades are up again. He is looking out of his own window. Jeffrey worries about being seen. This is an important idea, that Jeffrey, too, has a window. That he, too, can be spied on. The director introduces this idea early, before it’s important to the plot. Another example of foreshadowing. But look what else it does: it focuses our attention on what Thorwald really is looking at: the dog. The dog is digging in his garden. This, too, will become important later. This sort of misdirection is an important tool for the movie maker.
Now Thorwald is cleaning the case he used last night. What was in that case that he’s forced to clean it? The nurse brings him Binoculars. Visual aids like this one become an important symbol, a way of emphasizing how absorbed he is by Windowland. He sees that Thorwald is putting jewelry into the case. We eventually find out that it is costume jewelry. In other words, it is pretend jewelry.
The next thing Jeffrey grabs is his camera, because he has a huge lens that is even more powerful than his binoculars. This camera makes him seem like a moviemaker himself. Again, we have this theme of Jeffrey imposing his ideas on Windowland. Many of the times we see this camera, we see Windowland reflected in the lens. It’s almost as if Windowland only exists inside the camera, or the mind of Jeffrey.
The next thing Jeffrey sees is Thorwald wrapping knives in paper. Knives are a very dramatic image. Let’s think about what this scene accomplishes. It is this scene in which Jeffrey is completely convinced that Thorwald has killed his wife. As an audience, we don’t have to be sure that this is true, but we have to be sure that Jeffrey believes it, because Jeffrey will cling to this idea for the rest of the movie, and convince others of it. The director makes us sure through a variety of techniques in this scene. In addition to the evidence he shows, he also shows us how Jeffrey is now aware that he can be seen. He backs up away from the window. He is now fully a participant, no longer a casual observer.
scene 10
The scene opens on a thermometer. 80 degrees. Not subtle, but it does remind us of the heat. We see the songwriter cleaning up the mess he made. Notice how this corresponds to Thorwald cleaning up. The fire escape lady calls for her dog. This will set up a later time when she is searching for her dog. Also, look how music connects the Windowland people. The opera-like singing, which I think is coming from the songwriter’s apartment, blends into the lady whistling for her dog, which then fades to the sculptress whistling while she works. Again, we see the closed blind of the newlyweds. They are out of Jeffrey’s reach and out of our reach. This reminder of a happy, private couple then moves over to Jeffrey and Lisa in an embrace.
Once again, Lisa wants more than she can have. Jeffrey’s mind is on Windowland. She wants his mind as well as his body. Notice that when Jeffrey says that something is wrong, Lisa says there’s “something wrong with me.” She is trying to put herself into his thoughts, his concerns. Later, this will become a very dangerous thing for her to do.
conflict
Movies often will have a main conflict and smaller conflicts that relate to the main conflict. One of the smaller conflicts of this movie is that Jeffrey must convince Lisa of the murder. To make that conflict more exciting it must be made difficult. So in this scene, Lisa puts up strong arguments against the murder. He can’t convince her with words, but then she sees something. It is the visual demonstration that convinces her. She sees that he is tying ropes around a trunk.
more on misdirection
With a murder mystery, it’s important to properly confuse the audience. In this case, the very evidence that convinces Lisa is false. The trunk is simply holding his wife’s clothes and effects. But that doesn’t mean that something murderous hasn’t happened! Notice in this movie the twisted path to truth. Truth is gotten to through a variety of misunderstandings and misinterpretations, but also through instinct. In this movie, the instinct is correct even though attempts to support the instinct with evidence fail.
The scene ends with Lisa convinced. Jeffrey now has his first believer. Notice how much this is like religious faith. Lisa says, “Tell me everything you saw and what you think it means.” The first part is the religious vision, and the second part is the interpretation, like what a preacher does. But there is also a love story here. Lisa wants to connect to Jeffrey. At first she tries to compete with Windowland for his attention, but then realizes that she can do better by sharing his interest in it... and more as we’ll see in the next scene.
scene 11
There’s the phone again. It rings. The surprising part is that Lisa is on the phone. She is in Windowland! To connect to Jeffrey, she has actually entered the world of his vision, his dreams. And see what she is doing. She is telling him Thorwald’s name, just like in the beginning she told him her name. Is she a dream, or does this make Thorwald as real as they are? Either way, they all seem to be in the same boat now.
scene 12
Jeffrey’s on the phone again, this time to Doyle, a detective he knows. It is this call to a detective that convinces his second believer, Stella. Notice how Lisa is convinced by images and Stella is convinced by an authority figure (a detective, in this case). If it’s important enough to call a detective then it must be real. These really are different paths to faith.
Interestingly, in this scene, so soon after the murder is established, the blind goes up on the newlywed’s apartment. The husband hangs out the window. He is soon called back in, but we have the first crack in their fortress of privacy. Eventually, they will succumb to the call of the public realm.
The trunk, this false piece of evidence (called a red herring or a MacGuffin), is about to be taken away. Just like Lisa, Stella plunges into Windowland as soon as she is convinced, but to no avail. She doesn’t see what delivery company took the trunk away.
scene 13
Now Jeffrey faces a true skeptic, his hardest sell: Doyle, the detective. They both face Windowland, along with us, the audience. Doyle says he will investigate but he is utterly unconvinced.
The dog is digging in the garden again and Thorwald gently shoos him away. This very calm and gentle act contrasts very strongly with what will happen later. It is an extremely subtle form of foreshadowing, so much so that a second viewing of the movie makes this scene very disturbing, even though you barely notice the first time you see it.
scene 14
Another conversation with Doyle. This time, he presents the evidence that we have seen, but Jeffrey has not. This establishes Doyle as the representative of “reality,” of the larger world that doesn’t believe in Windowland. Thorwald was seen putting his wife on a train. Therefore, his wife can’t be dead. The way Jeffrey argues with this logic shows that Jeffrey is emotionally attached to his idea. He wants it to be true. Notice how Doyle sees Miss Torso. For him, Windowland is just shallow entertainment. The scene ends with a kicker. The detective produces a postcard from the wife who is supposedly dead. This physical piece of evidence is harder for Jeffrey to contradict. He begins to doubt his own belief. At the same time, he reaches for his itch again. His belief “scratches his itch.” He can’t simply discard it.
scene 15
Often in a movie, you will create a false climax. In this scene, Jeffrey has been faced with the notion that his belief his wrong. In order to emphasize this, the people in Windowland have a series of happy endings, but these endings will all turn out to be wrong. Miss Lonelyhearts is getting ready for a date. The songwriter has women over to his apartment. Miss Torso is dancing with a big studly fellow. Thorwald seems to be packing up for his own happy ending.
Interestingly, it’s Lisa who now tries to restore his faith! She does this by explaining how women behave. This is called deductive reasoning. She already knows how women behave, so she knows that this woman would not have left her purse behind. This sort of logic is like Jeffrey’s instinct, it is inadmissible in court. But Jeffrey and Lisa embrace, because they are still held together in their belief.
To underscore their renewed togetherness, Lisa shows Jeffrey her “purse.” But it’s not really a purse (more pretending). This is her “one suitcase” that was discussed at the beginning of the movie! It is her attempt at compromise, to fit into his world but still be herself.
Lisa likes the songwriter’s song. Notice how she is more emotionally connected to Windowland than Jeffrey is. In fact, by the end of the movie, someone will be singing “Lisa” to the tune of this song! But notice also how Jeffrey is fighting her attempts to make their relationship work. When she suggests that she can be a Girl Friday, Jeffrey mentions that the Girl Friday never marries the guy at the end. This is a very hurtful thing to say. Jeffrey’s inability to connect is not just in Windowland, it’s in all aspects of his life.
Doyle enters the room. Notice how Lisa went to get brandy before Doyle arrived. Doyle is “crashing” the party. He doesn’t really belong. Lisa accommodates him and gives him her own glass, but he never fits in. This is where Doyle tells us that the trunk only has clothes in it. The powerful visual evidence was false. Doyle tries to stay in this party, but he knows it’s a lost cause. As soon as he delivers the news, the two of them turn away from him and go to the window. He will never be a part of their world. Notice how this is emphasized by the party going on in the songwriter’s apartment. Their little brandy party is like an extension of this larger party. Doyle isn’t invited to either! Notice how Doyle spills his drink. This is a visual symbol of his inability to fit in. It is also foreshadowing the fact that he is wrong. You will often hear that film is a visual medium. That’s why seemingly trivial images like this are so important.
And just at this moment, when their belief has been shattered again, we see Miss Lonelyhearts and her fake happy ending. She brings a man home to her apartment, but the man is not caring, not loving. Miss Lonelyhearts pulls down the blinds, but the blinds don’t hide anything. This symbolizes her inability to shut herself off from the world. This inability will eventually save her. For now, it allows us to see her happy ending fall apart. She ends up alone again.
Seeing this very private tragedy makes Lisa question the ethics of what they’re doing, peeking into other people’s lives. Doyle, as well as representing “reality,” also represents “privacy.” He stresses the importance of privacy in a free society. Mere suspicion is not enough to allow detectives to burst into your apartment looking for clues. Freedom depends on our privacy, much like Jeffrey’s need to go off on his private adventures all over the world.
In a visually powerful gesture of defeat, Lisa pulls down Jeffrey’s blinds. She will now attempt to create a private world for Jeffrey, without Windowland.
scene 16
Windowland has other ideas, however. Lisa enters this scene in the gown that she carries out of the last scene (remember persistence of vision). This is a nightgown, something for sleeping, something very personal and private. But the privacy is almost immediately shattered by a scream from Windowland. Lisa opens the blinds. The lady on the fire escape is crying.
It’s as if Windowland has a life of its own and can’t simply be ignored. This is shown to us visually, because for the first time, we see Jeffrey and Lisa through their own window. We are peeping at them! This illustrates an important principle of moviemaking:
make your own patterns and then break them
The pattern of this movie has been to show things from the perspective of Jeffrey and his private world. Because this pattern is so well-established, any break from this pattern is very dramatic to the audience. This same shot would not be dramatic in another movie. But in this movie, we get a very strong signal. It says, pay attention!
Before I said there were intensely private and intensely public moments. Notice how quickly we move from the former to the latter. Everyone in Windowland is now focused on the dog. They are all seeing the same thing and feeling the same way about it. Even while the lady accuses everyone of being selfish, this is their least selfish moment. And speaking of breaking patterns, we now get our first and only close-ups of Miss Torso and Miss Lonelyhearts. The director is really hammering home the importance of this scene. This is no false climax, and the director is making sure you know that. Even when not in close-up, the angles are different in this scene.
Finally, we once again see the failure of Jeffrey to empathize. He is smiling. Instead of thinking about the tragedy of the dog’s death, he is happy because his belief is back. Why is it back? Because not everybody was together in that moment. Thorwald wasn’t looking out his window. Thorwald killed the dog. Thorwald killed his wife. And now, if it hasn’t happened already, the audience is becoming a believer.
scene 17
It’s morning. We have a beautiful, almost distracting, natural light, giving us a sense that something has changed forever. The three believers are all together: Jeffrey, Lisa and Stella. They pursue the clue of the dog (that’s all the dog is to Jeffrey, a clue). He compares a picture to reality. Notice how this resonates with the larger themes of internal vs. external, dream vs. reality. Another visual symbol.
The killer is packing. This gives a sense of urgency. It’s good when you can come up with a plot point that puts a time limit on your characters. That will add excitement to the story.
And now we get another new angle, an overhead view of the three believers. The overhead goes in close to a note that Jeffrey is writing, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?” This new angle adds emphasis to another important shift in the movie. Here is where Jeffrey actually reaches out into Windowland. Once he does this, he sets into motion the final culmination of the plot. Once he does this, he can’t turn back.
scene 18
Coming back to this movie, I was surprised how much happens in this one scene. This might be a clue as to how a suspense movie works. You “suspend” as much of the action for as long as you can, but you can’t let your movie get boring in the meantime. The way Hitchcock prevents boredom is by making it a movie about ideas. The ideas struggle with each other: Thorwald killed his wife! No, he didn’t! The characters struggle with their relationships. By this scene, our expectations are up to a fever pitch and Hitchcock almost has to condense a lot of action into this scene because we are ready for lots of action at this point. We want resolution of all this tension built up, especially since Jeffrey has now sent a note out to this dream world. He is finally making a real connection to it. To put it another way, the dominoes have finally been all set up, so when they start falling it will be spectacular but it will happen fast.
The scene opens on Jeffrey and Stella looking out the window. Lisa is missing, but you don’t realize this at first because the camera is in so tightly on them. This is a good trick, one to remember! Then we see Lisa in the alley. This is when Lisa takes a starring role in Windowland. It’s like a movie within a movie. She is now a star in Jeffrey’s eyes, but at the price of endangering herself. She drops off Jeffrey’s note. Thorwald almost catches her. This is a foreshadowing of her next encounter with Thorwald, when she won’t be so lucky.
Stella grabs the camera from Jeffrey. Like Lisa, she is more emotionally connected to Windowland than Jeffrey. She notices that Miss Lonelyhearts has some sleeping pills and might be considering suicide. We’ll come back to her later. Notice how often Hitchcock uses a one-two punch. He’ll show us something briefly to get it in our heads, then come back to it later. This is a good way to give something more reality, more legitimacy. We’ve seen it once already, so it seems real, not something made up on the spot to move the plot along (even though that’s exactly what it is)!
So, now when Jeffrey watches Thorwald, he’s watching him react to Jeffrey’s own message. The connection to Windowland is now a two-way connection. And when Lisa comes in the room, the first thing she wants to know is what’s Thorwald’s reaction. Look how Jeffrey beams at her. He’s smitten with her now that she is the star of his Windowland movie and cares about it as much as he does.
The temptation to interfere with Windowland intensifies. Jeffrey actually calls Thorwald. He lures him out of his apartment, under a false pretense, another example of pretending. Stella and Lisa enter Windowland in a visually dramatic way, by climbing into it. They unbury whatever’s in the flower garden, but this is another false lead. Remember, keep your audience confused! But in another example of faith being more powerful than evidence, Lisa climbs the fire escape and goes into Thorwald’s apartment! Through the window! Now the window becomes a literal entrance into someone else’s life.
Notice how Jeffrey whispers to her to try to get her to stop. Here we have his helplessness in its most dramatic form. He is helpless to help Lisa. His inability to connect with Windowland is now very dramatic and has consequences. Stella is back in the apartment and once again sees Miss Lonelyhearts with the pills. She tells Jeffrey to call the police. This call will end up saving Lisa’s life, because by the time he gets through, it’s Lisa who is in danger, because Thorwald has returned. This is the most painful and disturbing part of the movie. Thorwald is attacking Lisa and Jeffrey can do nothing about it, even when she calls out his name. He continues whispering.
Finally, the police come. They will arrest Lisa for breaking in, but they also save her from the killer. At this point, we get a very important moment of signaling. Lisa shows Jeffrey the wedding ring, which is now on her hand. This shows Jeffrey that she has real evidence. But Thorwald also sees it! So now, Thorwald knows she has evidence, but he also knows that somebody is watching from across the way. The connection to Windowland is complete, because now Windowland knows about Jeffrey. There’s only one more step and that comes next.
Thorwald comes into the apartment! Windowland has arrived! One of the things that makes this scene so much more interesting than a run-of-the-mill suspense movie is that Jeffrey is just as menacing to Thorwald as Thorwald is to Jeffrey. It becomes apparent to us that Thorwald is the star of his own movie, and Jeffrey is a hidden nemesis that has been haunting him. Thorwald is terribly afraid in this scene, just as Jeffrey is. And Thorwald’s final act is a desperate one. He throws Jeffrey out the window.
And there you have it. The final step. The final connection. Jeffrey enters Windowland! This is the character development I was talking about before. It’s literally forced on him! We can hope now that he will become a more compassionate person.
scene 19
This scene is a classic example of denouement or falling action. The climax is over, and now we ease the audience out of the movie with a quiet scene suggesting a future for the characters. The scene opens on the thermometer. 70 degrees. The heat wave is over. The fever is over. The dream is over. We now see the real happy endings for the people in Windowland. The songwriter’s song has been published! He is playing his record for Miss Lonelyhearts, the very song that stopped her from committing suicide. Miss Torso has her true love return from the war. He’s not some dreamy hunk, but that makes him seem more real and we are “convinced” that there is a real love between them. The sculptress sleeps, giving us the impression that her sculpture is finished. The newlyweds are now arguing before an open window. They have now entered the public world with everyone else.
Jeffrey is sleeping. He misses his own denouement! Gee, maybe this whole movie was just his dream. We now see two casts. His limbo continues. Lisa puts down her adventure book and picks up Harper’s Bazaar. This is our last image of pretending. We hope that these two will stay together, but it won’t be easy.
I hope you’ve seen how limiting yourself in a movie creates challenges, but also creates possibilities. It can focus your movie in very intense ways.
and 
.
and Sophie's Choice. 
and 
.
and 
.
and .... um .... I dunno, but if you have a City Lights sitting around, SEND IT TO ME.
