Analyse the short openings of two films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window and Psycho.
David Marsh
Media essay – Analyses of film openings.
In this essay I am going to analyse the short openings of two films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window and Psycho.
Rear Window
The opening of Rear window begins with the camera moving through an apartment window, it surveys the local area from the same position, almost as if someone is looking out of their window, this by use of subjective camera. I can see that the area is an enclosed courtyard in the middle of a major city (possibly New York) people are visible waking up outside of their houses on their balconies because of the severe heat wave. A middle aged man who from the apparatus inside his apartment appears to be a musician, a dancer performing various stretches and children playing in the street. By being introduced to these different characters I can see how the audience is in a privileged position.
The camera then moves back inside the apartment, I can see a man sitting in a wheelchair, he is sweating from the intense heat wave and has a broken leg. On the cast surrounding his leg is an inscription that reads “here lie’s the broken bones of “L. B. Jeffries” The camera moves through his apartment, there is a broken camera and various pictures hanging on the wall, one of these pictures is of a car crash during a race, the debris form the crashed car is flying towards the photographer, from this brief information I can speculate that “Jeff” is a photographer and that he was the photographer of the car crash photo and that it is properly the reason he has broken his leg. There are many copies of the same magazine around Jeff’s apartment, on the cover of the magazine is a young woman, on the wall of the apartment is the negative copy of the same picture, form this I can determine that “Jeff” was the photographer of the picture on the cover and that this woman also means a lot to him (maybe his wife or girlfriend) I can determine that “Jeff” is the main character because he scene has concentrated more on him than on any other character.
