Film Noir, Rear Window (1954), and the Post-War Cult of Domesticity

(Based on lectures in the sociology of film and popular culture)

We're going to use Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window to examine Hollywood movies in period during the 1940s and 1950s and how they fit into the social context of wartime and post-war America. The most important artistic development in filmmaking during the 1940s was in the genre known as “film noir.” Film critics usually bookend the genre somewhere between 1941, when The Maltese Falcon was released, to 1958, with Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil. Film noir also made a comeback in the 1970s, especially with Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver. But the heyday of film noir was unquestionably the 1940s, in movies like Double Indemnity (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). 

Film noir were Hollywood movies with low budgets, B-movies which were semi-independent of the bigger studio films of the time, and which were not commercially successful during their own time. The Genre was named “film noir” by French film critics during the early 1950s, because they saw a subset of Hollywood films which stood out because of their pessimism, darkness, and cynicism, naming them “film noir” which in French literally means “black film.” Film noir is typically the story of an average, decent, unassuming man whose life unravels over the course of the movie. He might get mixed up in a crime or underworld dealings, and most often he is the victim of a woman he cannot resist, a woman who uses the allure of sex and money to control and manipulate the man in a way which leads to his downfall. 

This is the basic plot of most film noir, but the genre is distinctive not only for its story line but also for its cinematic technique and mood. Film noir is always set in the city, either a real one or a studio recreation, where the streets are chaotic and crowded and yet the main character is lonely and desolate. Film noir was almost always in black-and-white, and directors used lighting and shadows to convey the sense of impending doom, literally an act of foreshadowing. Scenes were shot in confined spaces and used angles where characters are enclosed within the frame--this was done to convey a sense of claustrophobia and imprisonment, like the characters are trapped, imprisoned within their surroundings. This is especially important in Rear Window. The overall message of film noir is that things are not what they seem, that there is an ugliness and darkness behind the façade of normality, that the reality and order that we take for granted is built on quicksand and threatens to dissolve at any minute. 

There were several artistic sources for film noir. One was the so-called hard-boiled detective novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashell Hammett, and James Cain--many of these novels were converted into movies that were among the most important of film noir. Stories typically involve detectives who go to investigate a crime, then discover that crime leads them to a larger conspiracy involving the powerful and corrupt. One of the key features is that the protagonist is a detective, but he typically works alone, not with the police force, because in this fiction there is a general distrust of the powerful, authorities, and social institutions. Another key influence for film noir was German Expressionism, German directors who made dark, moody films in Germany during the 1920s and 30s, who then immigrated to the US after Hitler came to power and continued to make movies in the US. Some of these include the most important directors in cinematic history: Fritz Lang (who directed Metropolis and M), Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot). American directors were then influenced by Germans, taking the genre in new directions: Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, A Touch of Evil), Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night, Rebel Without a Cause). One additional influence for film noir was the gangster film of the 1930s, especially how directors used the setting of the big city and the depiction of a criminal underworld, using shadows to convey danger and violence. The director of Scarface, Howard Hawks, went on to direct one of the most important film noir, a movie called The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler story and starring Humphrey Bogart.  The main difference was that the protagonist of film noir was more likely to be a middle-class WASP, not an ethnic working-class gangster. 

Alfred Hitchcock is not usually considered a noir director by film critics, but many of his best movies from the 1950s certainly borrowed from the style and mood of earlier film noir, including Rear Window but also Strangers on a Train (1951), The Wrong Man (1956), and Vertigo (1958).Rear Window is a movie about photographer (played by Jimmy Stewart) who has a broken leg, and is confined to a wheelchair, who spends his time spying on his neighbors with a camera and binoculars, and then he thinks he sees one his neighbors murder his wife. The entire movie is shot from one point-of-view, with Stewart looking out his window. Hitchcock thus placed Stewart in the same position as the moviegoer, because Stewart is unable to act or move, unable to help when the situation gets dangerous, but because of modern technology he does have the power to watch, he can be a spectator. Hitchcock adds a Freudian element to this, presenting Stewart’s broken leg as a kind of impotence, even castration, because for the whole movie Stewart’s leg is this long, protruding object which is all damaged and bandaged up, preventing him from acting or helping to rescue his woman. He can’t take care of himself or his girl, he can’t even scratch his leg when it itches because it’s in a cast. On the other hand, when he wants to get better a look at his neighbors, he pulls out this ridiculously huge telescopic lens and puts it between his legs, as if it were a phallic substitute. Its clear that that’s where his power comes from. He may be impotent in the sense of having a broken leg and being confined to a wheelchair, but the telescope gives him a surrogate form of power, the power to watch. Also note that when he is attacked, the way Stewart defends himself is by using the blinding flash of his camera. 

So the whole movie is filmed from one place, Stewart’s apartment allegedly in Greenwich Village, and filmed from the perspective of looking into other windows; this is a recurring feature of film noir, “frame within a frame,” where you see one picture within another picture, and so on. Hitchcock uses this to add to the suspense and the mystery: both Stewart and us, the audience, can only see by looking into windows, and thus our view is imperfect, we have to make inferences, educated guesses, about what we can’t see and can’t hear. Rear Window also exemplifies some of the conventions of film noir insofar as it is a story about being confined and trapped, shot in order to convey a sense of claustrophobia. The movie is also filmed in the city, but we only get see one slice of it, between the buildings we can see people and cars rush by, the hustle and bustle of the city.

And Hitchcock also draws on noir conventions, like using shadows to convey a sense of impending doom, or using a rainy night to convey danger and mystery.

The idea of watching your neighbors, the themes of surveillance, vouyerism, paranoia are perfect metaphors for the social context of the 1950s. There were two social factors that contributed to a sense of paranoia and surveillance, the need to watch your neighbors during the 1950s. One was the Cold War. The Cold War was ostensibly a conflict with the Soviet Union, but it also contributed to a sense of paranoia about communists here in the US. Beginning in 1947, an organization called HUAC and Senator Joe McCarthy led an investigation of alleged communists in the US. One of the first places they investigated was the Hollywood film industry: this led to the conviction and imprisonment of a group of screenwriters who became known as the “Hollywood Ten,” as well as the blacklisting of hundreds of actors, directors, screenwriters, including Fritz Lang. One of those led the anti-communist investigation in Hollywood was an actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild named Ronald Reagan. So the culture of Cold War was that you not only had commies living in Russia and China, but also right here at home, they might live next door and look as “normal” as anyone else, so you had to keep your eye on them. In the 1950s there were movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and I Married A Communist, which contributed to that sense of paranoia, the fear that you have to keep an eye on the neighbors, because "you never know."

Another aspect of 1950s American society which depended on people watching their neighbors was the consumer culture. This was watching your neighbors in the sense of “keeping up with the Jonses,” not looking for a conspiracy, but rather to see what they are wearing or driving, to look at their house and appliances. The culture of the 1950s was largely defined by conformity through consumerism. The 1950s was time when millions of middle-class whites were moving to suburbs, buying a new house, new car, new appliances, and it thrived on people wanting to establish social status through acts of consumption, buying the newest, the biggest, the shiniest, the “new and improved.”

Consumerism thrived on people comparing themselves to their neighbors, people making sure that their stuff, their material goods, were just as good or even better than their neighbors. In the 1950s, the reference group for comparison might be real neighbors in the suburbs, or they might be a fictional family on television. 

Television was the most important technological innovation of the 1950s, and it fueled consumerism not only through its advertising and commercials, but also by depicting the suburban family living the American Dream and owning all the best and newest stuff, sending the message that your family could also be this happy if only you drove the newest car or bought the new deluxe refrigerator, just like the one the Cleavers have in their house. This is something interesting to think about with regard to Rear Window and Hitchcock, because Jimmy Stewart is in the same position that the consumer and the television viewer is in: they can look but don’t act, they are spectators rather than participants. The consumer economy depended on people being as impotent and passive as Jimmy Stewart, sitting at home, watching TV, watching and comparing themselves to their suburban neighbors or fictional TV families. 

The other place where Rear Window exemplifies social anxieties has to go with gender, sexuality, masculinity, and marriage. In the typical film noir, there is a fear and mistrust of women: women are temptresses and manipulators who use sex to get what they want, leading to the downfall of the male character. These women are dangerous because they are unattached, independent, powerful, and after money and material gain. This collective anxiety is related to the social context of wartime America, because during World War II women had been called to work in the factories, in the war industries while men went off to war. The U.S. government aggressively tried to recruit women into the workforce, like in the “Rovie the Riveter” campaign. Then after the war, women were asked to leave their jobs and go back to being housewives and baby-makers, it was assumed that those jobs in the factories and industry belonged to men, that they needed them more than women. However, this created a lot of fear and instability about gender roles in the post-war years, because you had a whole generation of women who had gotten a taste of independence by working outside the home, and they were now asked to go back to being barefoot and pregnant. Many critics have analyzed the fear of powerful, independent women in film noir in relation to these events during and after the war, as a reflection of American society’s fear of women who are independent and not in their place. 

Rear Window also depicts a fear of women, but for a different reason: they represent domesticity, because they tie men down and force men to settle into a life of suburbia, working 9-5, monogamy, basically they put an end to fun and adventure. This is a common theme of Hitchcock movies. In Rear Window, Stewart is being pursued by Grace Kelly, it seems unrealistic because she’s throwing herself at him “take me, Jeffrey” and he’s sitting in a wheelchair with a broken leg and he’s still like “I don’t know.” Meanwhile, his nurse, the other woman in the movie, is nagging him to get married and settle down, so she also represents smothering domesticity. Basically, he’s afraid of Grace Kelly because he knows she wants him to marry her, and that would mean giving up his career as photographer and travelling to exotic lands, because she’s too feminine for him to take her. So when Grace Kelly is introduced in the movie, there's this long scene where she literally casts a shadow over his entire face, another instance where Hitchcock uses shadows to convey danger, only this time the danger is a woman who wants to get married.

  

In fact, all the neighbors who Stewart watches inhabit various places on the marriage and family spectrum: a young girl pursued by male suitors, a lonely woman who has an imaginary romance, a newlywed couple who always have shades drawn, a piano player who lives alone, a childless couple with a dog. Hitchcock sets up all sorts of parallels between the neighbors and Stewart as he’s watching them. When we are introduced to the suspected murderer and his wife, it is at the same moment when Stewart is going off on marriage and “nagging wives,” and we see the wife across the street nagging at the husband who’s eventually going to kill her. Critics have suggested that the neighbors are actually supposed to be projections of Stewart’s unconscious, his psyche, his fantasies and imagination, and perhaps by extension even the unconscious fantasy life of us, the audience. Violence against women is a recurring theme in Rear Window, and it seems Stewart always sees it happen when he feels he is being trapped or nagged by the women in his own life. Also interesting is that the women in movie are referred to by their body parts: Miss Torso and also Miss Lonelyhearts, and also some speculative banter about how the murderer has chopped his wife into little pieces. 

Throughout the movie, Stewart tries to distance himself from Grace Kelly, to fight off her seduction, but in the end she wins, she gets her man. In the last scene we see Stewart with not one but two broken legs, which confirms the sense that a broken leg is a metaphor for being trapped and impotent. Then we see Grace Kelly dressed in pants and a man’s shirt, whereas throughout the whole movie she’s been wearing extremely feminine clothing, but in the last scene she’s in men’s clothes, almost as if she’s conquered and overpowered her prey. In the last scene, first we see her reading a book about the Himalayas,  something that would be in line with Stewart’s interest in travel and photography, but then she sees that he’s sleeping, so she puts down the book and picks up a fashion magazine.It's a revealing scene, because throughout the movie Grace Kelly has been made to represent consumerism, vanity, and glamour, she represents those who are the objects of the camera’s gaze. In fact, in the first scene of the movie, we actually see her face on the cover of a magazine, and there are numerous references to her being from Park Ave. and her shopping.Hitchcock is making a statement that the object, the consumer, the glamorous woman eventually triumphs over the man, over those who are the subject of the gaze rather its object. So Hitchcock is making an implicit statement not only about men and women, but also about the age of television and consumerism, and how they will lead to the triumph of objectification, appearances and images, vanity and glamour.