I don't know when Hitchcock/ Truffaut is dropping around here, but it will be interesting to compare with what you write here. Truffaut definitely attempts to establish Hitchcock's auteurial credentials, whilst Hitch shrugs a little like a good South London boy would. "Yeah I suppose so".
Having some understanding of what Truffaut thinks would help watching him speak to Hitchcock. Oh yeah again mea culpa. I read "Hitchcock/ Truffaut" its a brilliant essential book. I read Sidney Lumet book on directing too. I'm not sure about critics or academics but when you are truly great, and all 3 directors are certainly that in my book, you deserve to be listened to. Alex Garland? Hmmm. Not so much. Maybe later.
{People keep talking about my fave films; 2001, Fight Club, Miller's Crossing. Rear Window is number two (or 3, Point Break is bobbing around in there). Difficult to stay out the conversation}
Had Spielberg stuck to his guns of mainstream suspense, I would have still worshiped the guy as well.
Boom
You'll notice the tyre is flying straight at the camera. But look at racing drivers flailing around in the picture. ha weird detail.
Why play with our expectations if the result is that predictable?
Because playing with expectations is very entertaining.
that whole ending just makes no sense to me what it has to do with rear windows and spying on neighbors.
Jeff is punished for peeking on his neighbours. He gets thrown out of the window he was spying on people through. Perhaps its a cultural thing to be so amused by inherent ironies. Jeff gets his leg broken standing in front of a flying tyre. He then gets his leg broken standing in front of a homicidal maniac. Thrill seeker.
The irony of explaining a film post facto is not lost on me at all.
There's no rhyme or reason to the morality of the tale.
Its amoral. Life is amoral as an entity. The Universe doesn't care. There's a point of view that says that the universe is actually trying to kill you. It certainly balances the moral viewpoint that we should all be nice to each other. You end up with a balance. Its a zero sum total.Lets look after each other because the universe is out to get us. Life isn't moral or immoral. Its amoral. If you standing front of a flying tyre though you really are asking for the crappy end of the stick, that is life.
I think you have absorbed the auteurial premise and are looking for theme and a moral to a tale. In the same way Truffaut goes looking for it. Hitchcock's making an entertainment. Its why he was derided as not a serious director in the same way as Hawks and why Chabrol and Truffaut etc sought to change that view. Because they are French and the French understand the underlying existential crises as a philosophy, the same way they understand it in noir and why noir is a French not an American invention. The English shrug and get on. Truffaut French/ Hitchcock English. But watch"The Bride Wore Black" and see what Truffaut does with a Hitchcock premise. Its really a marvellous redefinition English to French translation.
My answer to the redefinition of Hitch as an auteur, which implies theme, apparently, is; is the theme of "The Birds" that "look out the birds are out to get us!".
We've become a race of Peeping Toms
Watch
Peeping Tom. Watch Almodovar. I think
Matador actually has direct references to voyeurism plastered on the walls of an apartment.
I guess I had a flawed perspective myself as a watcher thinking that this was an entirely different kind of story.
How about waiting till the film finishes and then start to draw conclusions. There's quite a lot of films that force that conclusion. Some of them are Hitchcock films. Varda's Happiness.Try working out a message in that film before it finishes and see what a mess you get into.
Jeff got away as a criminal voyeur
Did he? He gets thoroughly defenestrated. The man is tortured by not being ale to get back out in the world to start taking photos again. He gets sentenced three more months of house arrest because he was nosey.
Funnily enough I had the same thing happen. I had my leg rebroken so I spent twice as long cooped up in doors when I was 13. I sympathise very much with Jeff but its his own fault.
It's not a coincidence that it also stars James Stewart as the protagonist.
Like DD Lewis gets the juicy parts now? Not coincidental either. Stewart brought a certain charisma with him. Just like Cary Grant did. Grant is perfect for North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief. Stewart was made for RW and Vertigo. Hitchcock had his pick. He picked from the best. His output goes slightly off course at the point he gets Tippi Hedren and not Grace Kelly. Funny that he only works with Paul Newman when the drop off has set in.