Free Essay On Alienation Within Community In Rear Window

One of the most interesting themes or motifs in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is community and neighborhood, as evidenced by the use of composition and lighting in the scene in which the dog is found dead in the courtyard. The first half of the scene features Jeff’s apartment entirely closed off from the rest of the block, closed by curtains. When Lisa hears a scream and lifts the curtain, Hitchcock frames the neighbor crying on her balcony within the window itself, indicating a world just in the distance that Jeff and the other neighbors do not see. It is here that we finally cut to outside the apartment, to all the other apartments looking out on the dark courtyard, the bright lights shining through the windows to indicate people on the other side. The low angle on the neighbor as she shouts at her neighbors for not caring about each other gives her an air of righteous authority, with everyone looking at her through the invisible barrier of their own windows (even Jeff and Lisa).
The wide shot of the entire apartment building halfway through the scene offers a sense of scale and spatial relationships to each other, indicating both the incredible proximity and the great distance that everyone has with one another. The scene ends with Jeff noticing the dark window of Thorwald, the one person who did not come out to see. This piece of visual symbolism, accomplished through lighting, offers up Thorwald as the one person who does not care to be a part of the community, and therefore the prime suspect. These elements and more showcase Rear Window’s relationship to voyeurism and community, as these neighbors refuse to be involved in each other’s lives, even when tragedy strikes.