/me is in awe of tallman's w/u.
Love is blind.
-Geoffrey Chaucer
Mr. Nesbitt has learned the first lesson of not been seen- not to stand up;
however, he has chosen a very obvious piece of cover...
-Monty Python
Like many of his movies,
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is very concerned with various kinds of
seeing. The characters of his films constantly peer,
spy, and observe each other. Few, if any characters in Hitchcockian film define the role of the seer more fully than
L. B. Jefferies, the hero of Rear Window. He is a complete
seer; he is at once driven to observe others and terrified of being
scrutinized by others. Furthermore, he is jealous of anyone looking at anyone else. Most of all, Jefferies is terrified of the idea of being, quite literally,
blinded by love. The resolution of the story is in his overcoming his fear of
blindness.
Jefferies’
obsession with looking is in no way a subtle theme of the movie. He is constantly peering out his window at the neighbors, the flat face of the building across from his own becoming more and more like a
petri dish through a
microscope as the movie progresses. This theme is central to the plot of the movie and to the personality of Jefferies. Each of the other characters who enters Jeff’s apartment has their own take on his
scrutiny of his neighbors' nominally private lives, but one by one they are infected with his obsession until they become his accomplices in
neighborhood surveillance.
The more complicated facets of this obsession are more subtlely worked into the plot of the film, and deal more with the manner in which Jeff observes others, and with his reactions to being observed by others. The only thing which terrifies Jefferies more than being seen is the possibility of becoming unable to see others. It is because of these fears that he is so afraid of committing to
Lisa. Jefferies is not, generally, a particularly fearful man. The audience is told from the very beginning of the movie that Jefferies travels the globe, often going to
hostile environments to take pictures. He is injured because while on assignment, he was standing on an auto race track, trying to get a picture, and was hit by a car. These are the actions of a brave (if foolish) individual. It is because he is so otherwise brave that his fears about being seen and losing the ability to see become so clear.
Jeff’s fear of being seen is shown in his constantly
dodging into the shadows of his apartment whenever he fears Thorwald will see him. When Thorwald does see him, looking directly into the lens of Jeff’s camera, Jeff becomes terrified, urging Stella to turn the light off and
get away from the window. In a less tangible way, Jeff’s fear of being seen relates to his relationship with Lisa, as well. She is a very well-known member of
high society, and being in her company means subjecting himself to the glances, perhaps even the
cameras of others. The climax of this theme is also the
climax of the plot, the scene in which Thorwald enters Jeff’s apartment. In this scene, it seems more important for Jeffries to go unseen than to go unhurt. He could easily have picked up some sort of
weapon among the things lying around his cluttered apartment, something to fight Thorwald with, but instead he opts for the flash of his camera, using it to blind Thorwald. Clearly his fear of
physical harm has no influence like his fear of being observed.
Jeff’s fear of losing his ability to see sheds a new light on the phrase “love is blind.” Jeff is afraid that in marrying Lisa he will lose his ability to see, and with fairly logical reasoning within the scope of the story. He is a world traveler who knows that if he marries Lisa, he will be, to a certain extent,
reigned in. He will not have the freedom of traveling about the planet and watching the world through his
telephoto lens. This fear is demonstrated within the movie through the men in the movie who are already married. Each of them is, in one way or another, blind.
The
newlywed man shuts the
blinds in his window at the request of his wife, and each time he opens it during the movie, she calls to him, not wanting him to watch the world going on outside. The man whose wife’s dog is killed is not so much
blind in his own right, but is blind in comparison to the dog, which knows that
something is amiss in the garden. Doyle is blind because he refuses to see that a
crime has been committed until the idea is forced upon him, and when he is not blind, Jeff tries to force blindness on him, interrupting his appreciation of
Ms. Torso by asking about his wife, and warning Doyle from comment on Lisa’s nightgown. Thorwald, too, is blind. He is the only major male character in the film who wears
glasses. The only other bespeckled male is Stewart, Miss Torso’s boyfriend, who returns from the army at the end of the film, and who quite clearly has been unable to see, or at least see what she’s been up to. With examples of marriage and committment like these in his world, it is no wonder that Jefferies is afraid.
It is only after he is confronted by Thorwald, a man who is no longer tied down to a wife, but is still blind, that Jefferies is willing to begin blinding himself. In the final shot of the movie, we see a
peacefully sleeping Jefferies with his back turned to the window. He is accepting this blindness, and by leaving himself in the sunlight at the window, in full view of the world, he is beginning to accept being
seen by others. His blindness is proven as the shot swings over to the reclining Lisa, who observes his peaceful slumber and sets down her
Himalayan travel guide in exchange for a
Harper’s Bazaar.