Rear Window

Rear Window is one of the most celebrated movies dealing with the nature of photography, though it was decades too late to be the first, and decades too early to be informed by the disciplined, codified philosophy of photography. It is nowhere near being the most profound comment on photography in the history of cinema, but it remains a landmark for all the normally cited reasons: it was the last big movie-about-photography made when photography was still the dominant medium in consumer culture (1954), it is a masterpiece of set design and cinematography, the composer's piece that develops throughout the film is novel, Grace Kelly was gorgeous, and it remains a sturdy survey of modern courtship.

It seems eerily prescient now, but at the most fundamental level, Rear Window is about the young [in 1954] generation's reluctance to enter and embrace the institution of marriage. The use of the hero's apartment lookout as a metaphor for a camera, and the camera as a metaphor for detachment from actual experience, is an elegant way of depicting a general shyness away from marriage. It is a remarkably balanced treatment, too - every justification for this reluctance is plausibly portrayed across the courtyard of the hero's apartment building.

Long story short: After Aperture's article reminding the reader about this movie in which photography was prominently featured, I was initially disappointed in the movie as an exploration of photo-related themes. But now I think that photography - and voyeurism, the other commonly misidentified theme - are only used in the film to illuminate the real subject, marriage. Without digging too deep into it, I think it safe to say that every apartment on display across the courtyard is a type for some kind of marital problem. The main characters' watching is a cute way of showing what they imagine as the problems with their potential outcomes.

The hero's apartment is the vantage of a reluctant potential husband, and the camera is mainly there to illustrate the point that separates seeing/considering/illustrating from doing. This film is not about voyeurism. Voyeurism is a metaphor for the hero's desire to cling to his outsider status as a bachelor. When the hero's nurse chides him about being a Peeping Tom, her alternative suggestion is to marry his girlfriend. Combined with Hitchcock's mischievous boner iconography, this figures into a complex statement about the hero's preference to observe from the outside, but I think the gist of all of it is that the hero becomes a deviant for not getting married.

Shortly after the heroine announces the possibility of the couple splitting, she ends up in the killer's apartment with the murdered wife's ring on; the hero is contemplating the consequences of letting her go to end up in a marriage to someone else, and it is the worst situation he can imagine. He is most distressed and most emotive at this point. When the killer - the ultimate marital discord - comes to the hero's door and asks "What do you want from me?" the hero has no answer ready. The hero is trying to avoid asking himself, "What's the worst that could happen?"

He tries to distance himself from the approaching killer/idea/scenario - using photography. Flash bulbs are the best weapon the hero can come up with to remain distanced from reasoning through his own situation, from confronting the worst that could happen. This internal struggle thrusts him through the "rear window" - in effect out the camera, out of the separation between seeing and doing, and into the real world, where he obviously will marry his girlfriend. The end is not shown - you have to figure out what the movie says in its own language to know what happens to the hero. It is most uncommon for a big Hollywood movie to do that nowadays. Extra points for subtlety.