Katie Locke
American Studies
September 30, 2007

Alfred Hitchcock was not only known as the “ Master of Suspense “, he also liked to set challenges for himself. What was the challenge for “ Rear Window ” ? It was to make a great story with the camera never leaving Jeff‘ s apartment. There are three ways that Hitchcock made this film interesting. They were : You could spy on the neighbors through Jeff ‘ s binoculars and camera , he always added new characters, and using Jeff ‘ s imagination and reporter skills to solve the murder .

Using his camera and binoculars, we find out which neighbors Jeff was spying on. For example, he could have been spying on Miss Torso, who had a lot of men friends, but never dated any of them because she was waiting for her boyfriend to come back from the army. Then there was Miss Lonelyheart, who was depressed about not having many boyfriends and was going to take pills to kill herself. Or the newlyweds, who seemed to spend all their time indoors.

Hitchcock put different characters in the apartment with Jeff so that it always wouldn’ t just Jeff by himself. There was his girlfriend Lisa, who helped him solve the murder with her female intuition. Or Detective Coyle, who thought Jeff was imagining the whole thing and believed he wanted a good news story since he was bored because he had to stay in the apartment while his broken leg healed up. He also added one of Jeff’ s neighbors, who was looking after him.

Jeff used his reporter skills to solve the murder of Mrs. Thorwald. He first started to get suspicious when he saw Mr. Thorwald leave the house three times during the night with a suitcase. Then in the morning he saw Mr. Thorwald tie a suitcase with some heavy duty rope. He figured that Mrs. Thorwald’ s body pieces were in the suitcase but he later learned that her clothes were in the suitcase and that she had supposedly “ left “ for the country to help her health as an invalid. His girlfriend, Lisa, told him though that all the witnesses all agreed on seeing a woman but not the Mrs. Thorwald, the future one. She and the neighbor woman also said that no woman would leave behind her favorite purse along with her wedding band at home while on a trip unless she was dead. Another clue was that a neighbor ‘s dog had been found dead when it had been digging around Thorwald‘ s garden that same day. They noticed that he had not come to the window like everyone else had when the dog was found. So Lisa and the neighbor woman started digging in the same exact area to find what was buried there. Turns out Thorwald had moved whatever was buried into his house. Lisa got the bright idea to go into his house and find the wedding ring and find the ring she did. Then along came Thorwald who found her and roughed her up a bit. Jeff called the police to save and right before she was taken away, she signaled him with her hands that she had found the ring. Except Thorwald caught and came after Jeff to kill him which proved he was guilty.

In conclusion, those three ways proved that Hitchcock could make a suspenseful film, and yet keep the cameras in Jeff’ s apartment without making it boring. He added new characters like Detective Coyle, you could spy on the neighbors like Miss Torso through his binoculars and camera, and he used Jeff’ s reporter skills to solve murder like how and why Thorwald killed the neighbors dog. These three things added up to a great film.