Rear Window Essay

Recently, I watched a movie named Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock liked to set challenges for himself and the big challenge he set for himself in this movie was to film the entire movie in one apartment. When it comes right down to it, it seems like it would be a pretty boring movie if the camera stayed in the same place. No one would even watch it if it was really that boring, so they needed something to spice it up and make it more entertaining. Some elements that make a movie good are the music, camera angles, zooming, and what they actually film.

I think one thing that made the film more interesting was the different camera angles and zooming. I thought it was really interesting how they would zoom into a window or through the blinds of someone’s house. I also thought it was pretty interesting how the director would show different angles of the camera. For example, he would show the side view of an apartment then he would show the person walking across the room and into a different section of the apartment. I liked how the camera was constantly moving as well. It gave the movie something more interesting because you had to keep watching to understand where you are in the movie, because if you didn’t, you would miss what just happened.

I also thought the music helped to make the film quite interesting. Most movies nowadays can be scary or suspenseful without music, but in the time when this movie was made they didn’t have as many resources, so the effect that set the mood for the film was the music. I thought they picked great times to add little clips of different tunes. It made the movie so that there were parts where you were on the tip of your seat from pure excitement and others when you just wanted to cuddle up with your neighbor because you thought something was going to jump out of the TV!

The third thing that I thought made the movie unique was how the camera took different shapes. Sometimes it would show the camera as if you were looking out of binoculars so the shape would be a circle. I thought it was also pretty neat how they kept adding new characters, so by the end there was the main character (James Stewart), a detective, the mysterious woman who arrived at his house, the massager, the man next door who killed his wife, and of course all of his neighbors! He even saved a lady’s life who was about to overdose on pills because she was so depressed. I think it just made it interesting that it showed how much you could find out about your neighbors, just by looking into their rear windows!

As you can see, camera angles, zooming, music, and a variety of different characters really made a difference in the movie. Without having those four things the movie probably would have been far less exciting! I think with the right amount of those the film Rear Window actually turned out to be a pretty good film for being so old. Of course, these days everything would be much more high-tech, and probably more interesting to watch, but I would have to say that it was a pretty well made movie. Good job, Alfred!