THE GEOMETRY OF TERROR
|
|
- Irma Dickerson
- 6 years ago
- Views:
Transcription
1 THE GEOMETRY OF TERROR by Juhani Pallasmaa - space, look and narrative in Alfred Hitchcock"s Rear Window "Hitchcock... is so emotional that he pretends to be thinking only of the money." François Truffaut THE MATHEMATICS OF THE STAGE Developing as it does with the precision of mathematical thought, the Rear Window is probably Alfred Hitchcock s most perfectly constructed film. It takes place during four days, from Wednesday to Saturday, and the events are filmed from the window of one apartment and mostly through the eyes of one person - the magazine photographer L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart), confined to a wheelchair with his leg in plaster. Everything takes place in a block of apartments at 125 West 9th Street, Greenwich Village, at the south end of Manhattan, or more precisely within the buildings surrounding the courtyard. The address is made up as in reality this part of the street has no such number, because it changes into Christopher Street before reaching number 125. The fictional address is due to American law which requires that a film murder shall not take place at a real address. However, No. 125 Christopher Street was the address of the film murderer before the name was changed and in actual fact the model for the apartment block in the film was an actual building located at this address. Most of the buildings around the courtyard are typical American tenements built in the grim "Federal brick" style. On the extreme right is a multi-storey plastered building, in front a fourstorey brick house, directly in front a small, two storey building to the left of which is an alley leading to the street, and on the extreme left another red brick building that is so high that the upper storeys never appear in the film. The partly paved and planted courtyard is at different levels, and at the rear to the right is a part jutting out with a roof terrace joined to a glass fronted studio flat. L.B. Jeffries"s home is a two-room apartment. The film takes place in the living room which has a kitchenette separated by cupboards. It contains a bay window overlooking the yard, a fireplace, a door to the bedroom, and a front door three steps up from the floor. The bedroom door is opened only once when the protagonist s girlfriend Lisa goes in to change into her nightgown. This mysterious room, which is never shown to the audience, is a familiar Hitchcockian psychological 1
2 theme - there is a locked room in the film Rebecca, for instance, the door of which is never opened. During the period of Jeff s convalescence, a high bed has been moved into the bay, and the other furnishings have been moved to allow for his immobility and treatment. "In my opinion the most fascinating films are those where everything happens in one single place, such as Hitchcock s Rope or Rear Window, Marcel Carné"s Le Jour Se Léve and Michael Snow s Wavelength,"2 said the American film director and researcher Peter Wollen in his lecture at the first Film and Architecture seminar in Helsinki in October The extreme spatial restrictions of Rear Window - the film is seen from the perspective of a person bound to one spot and everything takes place within one huge set - was a stimulating challenge for Hitchcock: "It was a possibility of doing a purely cinematic film. You have an immobilized man looking out. That s one part of the film. The second part shows what he sees and the third part shows how he reacts. This is actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea."3 THE CHARACTERS IN THE FILM Walter Benjamin s description of the theatrical character of the townscape of Naples is an exact picture of the combined stage and auditorium in Rear Window: "Buildings are used as a popular stage. They are all divided into innumerable, simultaneously animated theatres. Balcony, courtyard, window, gateway, staircase, roof are at the same time stage and boxes." The tenants observed through the windows of their apartments are like a collection of butterflies in glass-covered cases - the director even puts this idea into the mouth of the photographer, "they can... watch me like a bug under glass, if they want to." The tenants form a cross section of New York s colorful populace: a song writer composer, a young dancer keeping her figure in trim, a sculptress, a middle-aged spinster longing for male company, the passionate newlyweds, a childless couple doting over their little dog, a salesman and his invalid nagging wife, and the film s protagonist, the magazine photographer L.B. Jeffries, Jeff, and his wealthy, fashion-conscious girlfriend - Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) who lives in the high rent district of Park Avenue and 63rd Street "and never wears the same dress twice". There s a heat wave going on, everybody keeps their windows open, and to wile away the time the convalescent photographer in his wheelchair begins to observe what s happening in the courtyard. "The field of vision has always seemed to me comparable to the ground of archeological excavation,"5 writes Paul Virilio. Despite being so contrived and restricted, the apartment block in the film is a rich excavation of city life in which the layers are only gradually exposed. The tenants form a closed community for whom the outside world appears distant; it is only seen in the film as a painted silhouette and a narrow view of the street. "What you see across the way is a group of little stories that... mirror a small universe,"6 as Hitchcock said about the world in his movie. Lower middle class life was in any case familiar to him from his own childhood in the suburbs of London. The tenants never encounter each other, except for a brief exchange of words between the sculptress and the salesman at the beginning of the film which he crudely terminates: "Why don t you shut up." Although the tenants have outside friends, they remain strangers to each other. "You don t know the meaning of the word neighbor," says the strangled dog s owner about her neighbors at this most dramatic scene in the film. Not until the scream following the discovery of the strangled dog do they come into the courtyard space and look down upon the centre of attention; the darkened windows reveal the dog strangler and wife murderer withdrawn from the group. He can be seen smoking a glowing cigarette in his darkened apartment. The darkness of this scene is undoubtedly one of the finest of its type in the history of the cinema. In this scene the camera moves temporarily and unnoticed into the courtyard to view the characters from below, as a single wide frame shot, from the perspective of the strangled dog. This deviation brings about one of the most dramatic scenes in the film. "The size of the image is used for dramatic purposes,"7 says Hitchcock about his cinematic dramaturgy. 2
3 THE LOGIC OF TERROR The suspense in the film is based on the irrefutable logic of terror. Hitchcock slowly awakens in the audience a stream of suspense which he dams until the final cataractous release. Hitchcock planned his film so precisely that after it had been edited, only a few dozen meters of film remained on the cutting room floor. As is usual with an artistic masterpiece, Rear Window weaves innumerable details into a faultless fabric in which allusions and hints criss-cross unendingly in all directions. Every episode or line appears to contain meanings and allusions. Miss Torso (Georgine Darcy), the nickname given to the shapely dancer, intimates mutilation, the central theme of the film. The little dog is killed because "it knew too much", a natural allusion to the film Hitchcock directed twice (The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934 and 1956). Hitchcock even wrote an enigmatic article about his wife Alma entitled "The Woman Who Knew Too Much".8 Even the words of the songs heard in the background always relate ambiguously to the scene. Colors, too, contain meanings: for example, Miss Lonelyhearts (Judith Evelyn) is coded in green; her dresses are always different shades of emerald green and there are no other green clothes in the film. Rear Window is truly a masterpiece of artistic abridgement: its richness and logic are only revealed after seeing it several times. But great works always contain a great number of redundancies, depths and levels. The narrative logic of the film, its architectural messages, role characterizations, atmospheres and secret hints, camera angles and shot compositions, space and image details, and words and music constitute a mosaic that builds up the suspense with the infallibility of the geometrist. The film ends like a geometrical exercise at school, q.e.d. - which was to be demonstrated. "Clarity, clarity, clarity, you cannot have blurred thinking in suspense,"9 as Hitchcock says. THE SITUATIONALITY OF MEANING Hitchcock stresses the importance of pictorial and material expression, to which he totally subjects the narrative dialogue: "Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms."10 Hitchcock s interest is not so much in the stories in his films but "in the way they are told." "The impact of the image is of the first importance in a medium that directs the concentration of the eye so that it cannot stray. In the theatre, the eye wanders, while the word commands. In the cinema, the audience is led wherever the director wishes."11 Hitchcock s ability to reveal the hidden feelings and moods of the characters by a simple gesture, rhythm or camera angle frees the dialogue for its contrapunctual purpose. On top of an everyday pictorial narrative, lines are spoken that have quite surprising or absurd dimensions, like the insurance nurse-therapist Stella s (Thelma Ritter) story of how she foresaw the Great Crash of "29 from the number of times her patient, the boss of General Motors, visited the toilet: "When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, soon the whole nation is ready to let go," she remarks. THE EXTRANEOUS AND THE CONTRADICTORY The extraneousness of the events, their intermingling and occasional triviality - like the meaningless helicopter flying over the buildings at the beginning of the film, which hovers to gawk at the bathing beauties on the flat roof -increases the credibility and irrevocability of the main story, in much the same way as the mundane and incidental details in the epic works of the great painters of history. Tizian s monumental painting Presentation of the Virgin brings a touch of ordinary life through irrelevant episodes: the countrywoman selling eggs, the boy playing with a dog and the mother with a child in her lap talking to a monk. A story achieves the aura of real life when it does not proceed too linearly and obviously; the individual will of the narrator and director controlling the events appears to simultaneously submit to the overriding power of destiny. Fear and love are contradictory and mutually exclusive emotions. In Rear Window suspense and fear often develop alongside the love affairs; the scenes where Lisa and Jeff are kissing, the 3
4 intimacy of the newlyweds behind the drawn blinds, the men fawning over Miss Torso, and the lovelorn Miss Lonelyhearts. Even the murderer is having an illicit love affair. Alongside the yearning and problematics of love, there are powerful erotic and sexual suggestions and symbols, such as Lisa s pining for love and Miss Torso s erotic teasing, and on the other hand Jeff s rebuffing of Lisa s approaches compared to his obvious interest in observing the intimate life of the dancer from a distance. As regards Jeff, he has both phallic symbols (the telephoto camera) and manifestations of frigidity and impotency (a leg in plaster and immobility). Jeff s rebuffing of Lisa and occasional rudeness is not explained by the difference in class or customs, as he would have it. The events in the lives of the tenants develop independently of the main story, but occasionally the climaxes of these separate stories are connected, as for example Miss Lonelyhearts" preparations for suicide at the same time as Lisa faces a dangerous situation in the murderer s apartment. Hitchcock creates a feeling of terror through well chosen scenes just when the mind is most receptive, such as when a bloodcurdling scream from the yard interrupts Lisa displaying her enticing lingerie, the murderer cleaning the butcher s knife and little saw against the sound of children playing, or when Lisa is kissing Jeff whilst his mind is preoccupied with the significance of the murder weapons. The murderer s gardening hobby also belongs to this series of contradictions. The occasional background sound of a soprano practicing simultaneously lulls the audience into a benign sense of security as well as a premonition of fear from the higher notes. "Emotion is an essential ingredient of suspense,"12 writes Hitchcock. SPECTACLE The lives of the tenants in Rear Window can be observed in the lit rooms behind uncurtained windows like separate films or TV programmes. Peeping into the apartments through the photographer s long focus lens and binoculars is a bit like channel-swapping with a remote13; Lisa Fremont s metaphors; "It s opening night of the last depressing week of L.B. Jeffries in a cast", "I bought the whole house", and "The show s over for tonight", as she pulls down the shades of the windows facing the courtyard in front of Jeff s curious eyes, all indicate a show. "Preview of coming attractions," says Lisa as she flashes the overnight bag containing her nightgown, is also a reference to the cinema-like structure of the story. The transfer of the action from one window to another - as if moving from one screen to another - creates a comical effect, but also brings to mind René Magritte s conceptual painting L"evidence éternelle, 1930, of a woman s body painted in parts on five separate, superimposed canvases or the landscape variation of the same theme in Les profondeurs de la terre, Actually, Jeff appears to create the story of the film in his own mind, as he interprets the meanings of the unrelated events he observes and almost directs how they will develop. The whole story might just be a dream or an illusion brought on by his immobility. He also cuts the film into montages by transferring his view (= camera s view = spectator s view) from one window and episode to the next and in selecting the image frames and distances with his own eyes through the alternative optics of the telephoto camera and binoculars. Jeff is thus simultaneously both the film s director and spectator and Rear Window in its entirety is a metaphor and study in making and viewing a film. THE REALISM OF THE SET The apartments are like stages stacked one upon the other, like urn recesses in a columbarium, with no access to the normal anatomy of an apartment block, to staircases and corridors; only the flats of the salesman and Miss Lonelyhearts are connected to a corridor. The young man in the just rented flat on the left reopens the front door in order to carry his bride over the threshold, but where the door leads to remains unclear. The block of apartments in the film is like a tree lifted from its roots without access to the ground water. Neither are the plans of the apartments "real", as they have been flattened against their facades so everything can be seen through the camera in Jeff s room. For example, the flats of the 4
5 Thorwalds and Miss Lonelyhearts are unorthodoxly approached through a kitchen. And where is the murderer s (Raymond Burr) bathroom located, the walls of which he is shown to be washing? The apartment block in Hitchcock s film appears to have been built by man into a mountain, a canyon, the excavated flats of which apparently lack another side, despite the fact that the audience is shown a narrow view of a rear street and a restaurant located at the opening between the buildings. The courtyard and the apartments facing it form a huge stage surrounded by what appears to be a hidden back stage in the darkness of which the occupants move from the street to their flats. THE PSYCHICAL MAP OF THE FILM Peter Wollen sees in general the series of places in a film as its structural elements: "Building up the story of a film... also means drawing a psychical map. In watching a film we form in our minds diagrams of the relationship between the different places on which the film is constructed, and of those routes the characters use in or between these places."14 The routes used by the characters in Rear Window are almost completely in the unknown back stage, neither can the audience form the kind of psychical map Wollen spoke of. The exit from Jeff s flat to the street is somewhere to the left behind the audience. The murderer creeping up the stairs to Jeff s flat brings the unfamiliar rear of the building into the audience s imagination and it is just the unfamiliar rear that maximizes the threat: at this stage the threat is not just the rather pathetic Mr Thorwald, but the labyrinthine unfamiliarity of the building itself. The true identities of the tenants, their invisible intimate life and subconsciousness, appear to be concealed in this back stage. The threat is not contained in what is shown, but in what is not shown. The terror is not in the scene projected on the screen, but in the minds of the audience. The wheelchair-bound photographer has to leave his front door unlatched so his girlfriend, nurse and detective buddy can enter; the three steps leading to the door prevent the wheelchair patient from opening it. The knowledge that the door is unlocked increases the threat of the footsteps creeping up the stairs. An extra dimension of terror is provided by the narrow strip of light under the door with its ominous guillotine-like shape. When the passage lights suddenly go out as the footsteps reach the door, it s like the blade falling; the startling of the audience when the lights go out further increases the intensity of terror. Hitchcock says about his special cinematic field, fear: "My special field (which I have split) into two categories - terror and suspense... terror is induced by surprise, suspense by forewarning."15 He went on to define the difference between the two: "Suspense is more enjoyable than terror, actually, because it is a continuing experience and attains a peak crescendo fashion; while terror, to be truly effective, must come all at once, like a bolt of lightening, and is more difficult, therefore, to savour."16 5
6 THE GEOMETRY OF VOYEURISM The film tells the story of a murder and its exposure, but its central philosophical theme is actually the voyeurist gaze. The complicated relationship between the watcher and the watched in Rear Window brings to mind Velázquez s painting Las Meninas. The location and role of the watcher have been the subject of philosophical contemplation in both. "We re all voyeurs to some extent, if only when we see an intimate film. And James Stewart is exactly in the position of a spectator looking at a movie,"17 François Truffaut notes when interviewing Hitchcock about his intentions in Rear Window. Jeff s voyeurism is not, however, a sexual perversion in its normal meaning, but more the professional curiosity of a photographer. Although the concept of private life would appear to be quite self evident, the 2800-page A History of Private Life18 shows that it has both an interesting history and a multiplicity of dimensions. In a drawing in his collection The Art of Living19 published in 1945, the well-known cartoonist Saul Steinberg shows a set-up similar to that in the film of a dissected apartment block exposing the private lives of its tenants. But even Steinberg had his predecessor; as far back as 1847 Le Magazine pittoresque s cartoonist depicted in his Tableaux de Paris drawing different life styles and social classes within the framework of a single building. The voyeuristic stage and private performances of Rear Window are also connected to the private peep shows, the "tableaux vivant", of Parisian brothels in the last century. "That s a secret, private world you re looking at out there. People do a lot of things in private that they couldn t possibly explain in public," says Detective Doyle (Wendell Corey) to Jeff. By way of introduction to the voyeurist content of the film, the bamboo shades rise slowly underneath the credits, like a view opening through drowsily raised eyelids; this is also a reference to the gradual awakening of the unsuspecting sleeping photographer to the reality of murder. The shades are likewise a metaphor for the stage curtain; as they rise they reveal the 6
7 courtyard, the scene of the unfolding drama. This introduction to the theme of voyeurism is also present in the hovering helicopter ogling at the scantily dressed girls. Throughout the film, the camera - the voyeuristic eye - is bound to the wheelchair in the photographer s room, apart from the climax when the murderer pushes his exposer out of the window - it then moves outside along with the photographer. The camera also pops outside during the scene of the strangled dog, but the spectator hardly realizes that it has momentarily strayed into the courtyard. In analyzing Descartes" writings dealing with reading, the philosopher David Michael Levin uses the term "bodiless reader".20 The protagonist in Rear Window and the spectator are likewise bodiless observers. Jeff s immobility eliminates the physicality of experience and transforms it into something purely visual; the eye subjects the other senses. Scratching his itchy leg under the plaster with a back scratcher epitomises the loss of Jeff s sense of movement and touch. His complete reliance on his sense of vision represents the spectator, alone and bound to his chair in the darkness of the cinema. It is just the spectator"s immobility that lulls him into a regressive, dreamlike state.21 THE MORALITY OF VOYEURISM "The New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the work house... You know, in the old days, they used to put your eyes out with a red-hot poker," warns Stella. "If you could only see yourself [with those binoculars]... it s diseased," Lisa scolds and comments that we are turning into "a race of peepers". "What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change," says Stella warning Jeff of the dangers of peeping. At the end of the film the murderer literally fulfills the nurse s idea by pushing Jeff out of the window - to see the inside of his flat from the outside for the first time. Jeff ponders whether it is ethically acceptable to spy on people through his long-focus lens. "I m not much on rear-window ethics," replies Lisa to his semi-rhetorical question. At first both Lisa and Stella disapprove of Jeff s snooping ("window shopper," accuses Stella), but later become keen peepers themselves. The murderer only realizes he is being watched when, following Lisa s worried hand movements, he notices the position of his observer. At this dramatic moment Jeff changes from being the surveillant to being the surveilled, and all of a sudden his former victim gains the upper hand. In trying to delay the approach of the murderer, Jeff blinds him with flashbulbs. In the eyes of the murderer, his field of vision is toned red - showing his temporary blindness and increasing rage. In this scene the contrast between darkness and light assumes an obvious symbolic meaning. On two occasions Jeff s suspicions about the crime appear to be unfounded. The main characters in the film, as well as the audience, are temporarily disappointed that no murder had been committed after all. This feeling of disappointment induces a sense of guilt which gets the audience even more closely involved in the course of the story. Whether in fact a murder has been committed is of importance also from the point of view of the moral acceptance of peeping. "I wonder if it s ethical [to watch a man], even if you prove that he didn t commit a crime?" muses Jeff. In his book Downcast Eyes, the philosopher Martin Jay brings out Freud s views on the relationship between the desire to know, sexuality and voyeurism: "Freud came to believe that the very desire to know (Wisstrieb), rather than being innocent, was itself ultimately derived from an infantile desire to see, which had sexual origins. Sexuality, mastery and vision were thus intricately intertwined in ways that could produce problematic as well as "healthy" effects. Infantile scopophilia (Schaulust) could result in adult voyeurism or other perverse disorders much as exhibitionism and scopophobia (the fear of being seen).".21 SURVEILLANCE AND THE SURVEILLED: THE PANOPTICON But Rear Window also philosophises about the distance between the surveillant and surveilled. In 7
8 the film, the latter are always distanced by the courtyard or some technical gadget. Distance gives to the experience a sense of helplessness and loneliness, as well as a subconscious feeling of guilt associated with watching. The spectator also sees himself as a Peeping Tom. The voyeuristic effect is created just in the one-sidedness of surveilling and because the object is unaware of being observed. The fact that the objects of Jeff's = the spectator's interest never look back, creates a voyeuristic experience and turns the spectator into a Peeping Tom whose feeling of guilt also makes him feel he is being scrutinized. There is an important psychological difference between the events in Jeff's room and those in the apartments opposite: the former are by nature theatre, whereas the latter distant episodes are cinema. Walter Benjamin discussed the psychological difference between these two art forms in one of his best known works: "The artistic performance of a stage actor is definitely presented to the public by the actor in person; that of the screen actor, however, is presented by a camera, with a twofold consequence.... The camera that presents the performance of the film actor to the public need not respect the performance as an integral whole."22 The audience experience the events in Jeff's room as a continuum, but those in the apartments opposite as unrelated fragments. Another element in the film is the duality of the voyeuristic gaze; simultaneous spectacle and surveillance. "Our society is not one of spectacle but of surveillance... We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine,"23 concluded Foucault. In his book Discipline and Punish,24 Foucault uses Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon as the main theoretical means for explaining how man became the object of surveillance in the institutional control, scientific research and behavioral experiments of modern society. Bentham's Panopticon had its predecessor in Louis Le Vau's menagerie at Versailles. At the centre of the building was an octagonal pavilion containing the king's salon, on every side of which large windows looked out onto seven cages containing different species of animals - the eighth side was reserved for the entrance. Similarly, in the film's menagerie there are seven flats being scrutinised and an alley from the street to the courtyard! But Foucault perhaps dismissed the possibility of simultaneous spectacle and surveillance, which is just what Hitchcock's film is all about. Vincenzo Scamozzi's design for the stage of Andrea Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza (1584), a vista of seven different streets, is likewise reminiscent of the panopticon as well as the set in Rear Window where seven different flats can be observed from Jeff's room. The film set lifts peeping to the third potential; 1) the movie camera watches 2) the photographer watching through his telephoto camera, and 3) the audience in turn watches the events through the illusion projected on the screen. Rear Window is a heightened central perspective film, which brings to mind the perspective drawing device used by the Renaissance artist in one engraving by Dürer. The point of projection of the central perspective, Jeff, is simultaneously a member of the cinema audience and the first person narrator of the story. In using a perspective device an artist normally requires an assistant, just like Lisa, Stella and Doyle function as Jeff's legs in his investigations. 8
9 CAMERA OBSCURA AND THE STAGE AS A MACHINE The photographer tied to his room becomes both camera and projector, as well as a camera obscura representing his own room.25 "Can I borrow your portable keyhole," asks Stella taking Jeff's binoculars. The Peeping Tom is basically the photographer's room, the spatial location of which in the apartment block complex enables the ensuing situation. The set, made under the supervision of Joseph MacMillan Johnson and Hal Pereira - the Rear Window's panopticon - is perfect as the logical architectonic projection of the story. The location of the film's action, with its courtyard, gardens, streets, cars and thunder showers, was made in Paramount's largest studio, Stage 18, which measured 55 x 30 metres and was 12 metres high.26 It was the largest set ever built for Paramount, and included 31 flats of which 12 were fully furnished. Hitchcock himself supervised the construction which took six weeks. The structures contained 70 windows and doors, and the walls in Jeff's flat were removable to allow for all possible camera angles. The lowest level of the courtyard was built below the studio floor. Filming the events in the individual flats and all the small objects (the ring, pearl necklace, the name Eagle Road Laundry on the murderer's laundry parcel - the word laundry alludes to the French mass-murderer Henri Désiré Landru, upon whom Chaplin had based his film Monsieur Verdoux eight years earlier in ) would not have been possible in natural light. The day and night lighting for this colossal set required all of Paramount's equipment. As much as the narrative itself, the structure of the film is composed of the spatial relationships and geometry of the tenants' flats, the courtyard, the alley to the street, the street itself with the restaurant on the opposite side and the view above of the south town silhouette. The apartment block is a stage machine which produces the narrative according to the script. The set is thus a kind of variation on the theme of the promenade architectural - architecture subordinated to a linearly advancing story. It is also the architecture of surveillance and domination according to Michel Foucault's well-known analysis; his picture of the cells in the ideal panopticon-prison corresponds exactly to Hitchcock's cinematic panopticon: "They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.... Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from where he can be seen from the front by the supervisor, but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but be does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication."28 The scene in which the naked dancer is in the bathroom and the murderer in the corridor leading to his apartment, separated by only the thickness of the wall, are the solitary cells in Rear Window's panopticon. PAINTING THEMES IN REAR WINDOW Edward Hopper's painting Night Windows (1928), the theme of which is an illuminated room in the house opposite, is like something out of the voyeurist world of Rear Window. Miss Lonelyhearts, waiting for her imaginary companion or contemplating suicide, is also like one of Hopper's paintings - for example, Automat (1927) - lonely women sitting in a café; even the green colour of her dress appears in Hopper's paintings. It is evident that Hitchcock was fully acquainted with the works of Hopper for he had Bates' house in Psycho (1960) built according to the artist's painting House by the Railway (1923). Many of Hopper's other paintings are also related to the voyeurist theme of the film. In Night Hawks (1942) and New York Office (1962) the subjects of external scrutiny are a night bar and an office; in Apartment Houses (1923) and Room in New York (1932) the intimate interiors of private homes. Girlie Show (1941) draws directly on the sexual content of voyeurism, whereas in Eleven A.M. (1926) a naked woman is staring fixedly at the courtyard from an open window. Finally, in Office in a Small Town (1953), a lonely man in an office appears to be surveilling and commanding his immediate surroundings in much the same way as L.B. Jeffries in the film. A figure looking out of a window is a familiar motif in painting since the Renaissance. However, the spectator, the artist, is always in the same space as his model and with his or her approval. On the other hand, looking through a window into a room from the outside only became popular 9
10 in our century. By its very nature a window is meant for looking out of, not the reverse. A view of the inside from the outside confuses the ontology of the window and makes it a voyeuristic instrument, and the object is no longer conscious of being under external scrutiny. HITCHCOCK AND DUCHAMP The voyeurism of Rear Window and the boundary between the private and public domains create a link to some of the central themes of modern art. The best known work dealing with the nature of voyeurism is undoubtedly Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés: 1. La chute d'eau, 2. Le gaz d'éclairage ( ), which the artist was making at the same time as Hitchcock was making his film. Duchamp made his final work in complete secrecy as it was believed he had given up art altogether. Both the film and Duchamp's enigmatic work are studies in fixed eye central perspective, the interaction of intimate privacy and voyeurist gaze, and the intertwining of eroticism and violence. An intimate event becomes public once a district attorney becomes involved, in other words when a crime has been committed under the veil of privacy. In Duchamp's three-dimensional composition, a woman lying with her legs apart upon a reedy shore, a gas lamp raised in her left hand, is observed through two holes in an ancient Spanish timber door. In the background sparkles an electrically-operated illusionary waterfall. The young, fair-haired female figure's hairless pubes are indecently exposed directly in front of the viewer's eye in the dazzling light of a diorama. The perspective diorama composition suggests a narrative of sexual perversions or violence, but the event remains unexplained.29 The way in which the spectator's mind seeks a causal logic from the hints in Duchamp's construction, is reminiscent of the way Jeff perceives the logic of the series of episodes he sees from his window. Duchamp's work arouses a simultaneous feeling of scopophilic excitement and voyeuristic shame. The incident in Hitchcock's film is exposed as a crime, but that in Duchamp's work remains for ever enigmatic; is this Duchamp's perfect crime? But as Octavio Paz notes in his essay on Duchamp: "We pass from voyeurism to clairvoyance."30 Likewise in Rear Window the voyeurist gaze ultimately leads to clairvoyance and the purification that characterises a work of art. 10
11 THE ROLES OF OBJECTS The language of objects plays a central role in this as in all Hitchcock's films. "I make it a rule to exploit elements that are connected with a character or a location; I would feel that I"d been remiss if I hadn't made maximum use of those elements,"38 says Hitchcock about the importance of location and objects in his films. The photographer's camera naturally plays a fetishistic leading role. The objects in Jeff's room offer clues to why he is in a wheelchair with his leg in plaster; the photographs indicate his profession, the close-ups of racing cars the dangers he loves, and the shattered camera the accident on his last assignment. The camera is Jeff's tool and livelihood, but during the film it changes into a means for observing, warning and investigating, and - ultimately - a weapon of self-defense. The slide photographs of the garden - which the murderer has used for burying something - are another dimension of the camera. In the murderer's apartment the murder weapons (the knife and saw), the aluminum jewellery sample case used to convey the dismembered body, the rope-bound trunk containing the wife's belongings (Jeff and his assistants, as well as the audience, are actually temporarily led to believe that the trunk contains bits of the body; "He better get that trunk out of there before it starts to leak," says Stella) represent violence. The rope conjures up an unpleasant association with hanging in the spectator's mind. The murdered woman's ring and handbag also play a role in the story. Lisa slipping the ring onto her own finger has a double meaning in its reference to her ardent desire to marry Jeff. Lisa's fashionable clothes - particularly her overtly provocative diaphanous nightgown - and her fetishism for expensive objects related to her value world creates a powerful symbolic tension compared to the mundane lower middle class existence of Jeff and his fellow tenants. The apparent contradiction between the wealth reflected by Lisa's family and profession and the photographer's impoverishment ("I have never more than a week s salary in the bank.") is continuously emphasized by Jeff. But in his book Techniques of the Observer, Jonathan Crary connects photography and money in a way that eliminates any superficial class differences. "Photography and money become homologous forms of social power in the nineteenth century. They are equally totalizing systems for binding and unifying all subjects within a single global network of valuation and desire.... Both are magical forms that establish a new set of abstract relations between individuals and things and impose those relations as the real. It is through the distinct but interpenetrating economies of money and photography that a whole social world is represented and constituted exclusively as signs."32 There is thus no real contradiction between the worlds of Lisa and Jeff - from the beginning they both belong to the same power elite. The characters in the film are also treated as objects. The dancer and the ideal of perfection that Lisa represents are personifications of magazine femininity and erotic desire. In his immobility and helplessness Jeff is also transformed into an object, which the others have to move and care for. In the end even the figure of the murderer loses his vileness and repugnance when revealed as the pitiful product of a cruel fate he has only tried to conceal. Due to their prototypically all the characters in the film are representatives of their own genre - models and concepts. FICTION AND REALITY In Hitchcock's film the audience is so gripped by suspense that the obvious theatrical unreality or architectonic incredibility of the buildings can no longer release or moderate the reality of terror. Architecture has lost its normal meaning and has submitted to terror. On the other hand, the incredulous staged background can also be seen as a striving for absolute truthfulness. At the end of the film the police arrive in Jeff's room only a few seconds after being alerted, but in fact the Sixth Precinct of the Manhattan police is actually in Tenth Street, just opposite the entrance to Jeff's flat. The Hotel Albert, where Jeff lures the murderer, was on the corner of Tenth Street and University Place when the film was being made - nowadays it has been refurbished as an apartment block. The script of Rear Window was based on Cornell Woolrich's short story of the same name, to which Hitchcock added some authentic material about two macabre crimes - thus the film's 11
12 fictional crime acquires a realism from two real-life cases. In the case of Patrick Mahon, he murdered a woman, dismembered her body and threw the bits one by one from a train window, except the head which he burnt. In the case of Dr Crippen, he murdered his wife and also dismembered her body. For a long time he managed to delude friends curious about his wife's disappearance by telling them she had gone to California. He was recognized whilst making his escape by steamer, in the company of his mistress disguised as a boy, on the basis of his wig and lower set of false teeth.33 HUMOUR AND FANTASIES It is characteristic of Hitchcock to raise the threshold of an audience's suspense by creating a smoke screen of macabre humor: "And for me, "suspense" doesn't have any value if it's not balanced by humour."34 Innocent macabre comments by Jeff and Stella inveigle the audience into imagining that a woman's body has been dismembered in one of the flats and the bits carried away in the sample case: "That would be a terrible job to tackle, just how would you start to cut up a human body?", "Just where do you suppose he cut her up? "Course, the bathtub! That's the only place where he could have washed away the blood", "In a job like that it must have splattered a lot," and "The only way anybody could get my wedding ring would be to chop off my finger". The film does not show the murder or the dismemberment, not even a drop of blood, but they appear even more realistically in the minds of the audience. The nocturnal moment when the murder takes place is marked by the woman's muffled shriek and the sound of a glass breaking, but at this stage the audience is not ready to appreciate the meaning of these almost imperceptible sounds; this they acquire later on when the audience returns in its mind to the chronology and logic of the drama. The night thunder that accompanies these sounds probably gives the audience a feeling that something tragic has occurred. The events which the audience imagines and its feelings about them are more impressionable. "I have always felt that you should do the minimum on the screen to get the maximum audience effect,"35 as Hitchcock says expressing his principle of cinematic minimalism. At the end of the film the audience is forced to imagine that part of the woman's body was buried in the flowerbed, after hearing that Thorwald had dug it up and put it in the victim s hat box; this episode brings to mind the Mahon case where the murderer also had trouble disposing of the victim's head. During the film the spectators and actors of the spectacle change places on two occasions: Lisa moves from the auditorium to the stage, ie, the murderer's flat, and the murderer to Jeff's flat, i.e., the auditorium. But the murderer also steps into the domain of the audience: Thorwald's arrival takes place quite clearly behind the vulnerable and unprotected back of the audience. The traditional theatre convention is that the spectator is inviolable, but when at the end of the film he is violently attacked, the psychological security created by the theatre illusion is shattered. THE REALISM OF DREAMS In his films Hitchcock reveals that behind everyday reality there is another reality. As he says: "Things are not as they would appear to be."36 Any object or place becomes horrifying and unreal when we are capable of seeing through normal realism; beyond realism there is always surrealism. Subconscious, forgotten and rejected images seep through the ordinary consciousness dominated by the superego; without noticing it, our brains and nervous systems chart the dangers lurking in the unfamiliar. Even the faces of our mothers are transformed into frightening eroded landscapes if we stare so long that their familiar and loved features lose their ordinary meanings. In Hitchcock's films it is just the wavering between ordinary consciousness and dreams that predominates, the unreality of reality and the reality of unreality. "For a director who bothers to really open his eyes, all the elements in our lives contain something make-believe,"37 wrote Jean Renoir in his autobiography. This becomes particularly 12
13 clear when we watch Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. The film is a kind of conscious dream. But even the artistic stages of architecture are always something other than the total of their material structures. Even these are primarily mental spaces, architectural representations, and images of the perfect life. Architecture, too, leads our imagination to another reality. * "Man does not live by murder alone - he needs affection, encouragement and - every now and then - a drink." (Sir Alfred Hitchcock"s toast) Juhani Pallasmaa, valedictory lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology, SOURCES, REFERENCES 1 Interview by Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du Cinéma, No. 190, May Quoted in Françoise Truffaut, Truffaut by Truffaut, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1985, p Peter Wollen, "Architecture and the cinema: places and unplaces", Rakennustaiteen seuran jäsentiedote 4:1996, Helsinki, p Françoise Truffaut, Hitchcock, Paladin Grafton Books, London, 1984 (1978), pp Walter Benjamin, Reflections, 1978, p Quoted in Marco Frascari, "The True and the Appearance - The Italian Facadism and Carlo Scarpa", Daidalos 6, 15 December 1982, Berlin. 5 Paul Virilio. L"horizon négatif, Galilée, Paris, Quoted in Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1995 (1990), p Ibid., (source 3), p Ibid., (source 3), p Hitchcock published this article in McCall"s magazine two years after completing Rear Window. Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews (Sidney Gottlieb, ed.), University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1995, pp Jane E. Sloan, Alfred Hitchcock: a filmography and bibliography, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1993, p Ibid., (source 3), p Alfred Hitchcock, "Film Production" (1965), ibid. (source 8), p Ibid., (source 3), p It is pretty certain that Hitchcock did not have TV channel-swopping in mind when Rear Window was being planned and shot in the first half of the 1950s, but more likely film watching. 14 Ibid., (source 2), p Ibid., (source 9), p Alfred Hitchcock, "The Enjoyment of Fear" (1949), ibid. (source 8), p Ibid., (source 3), p Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (general editors), A History of Private Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., Saul Steinberg, The Art of Living, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1949 (1945). 20 David Michael Levin (ed.), Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993, p Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1994, p Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Illuminations, Fontana/Harper Collins, London, 1992 (1970), p After writing the paragraph about the idea of the panopticon, I read Robert Stam"s and Roberta Pearson"s wonderful article "Hitchcock, Rear Window: Reflexivity and the Critique of Voyeurism" in A Hitchcock Reader (edited by Marshall Deuterbaum and Leland Poague), Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa, 1994 (1986), pp The writers also connected the idea of the panopticon to Rear Window. 13
14 24. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Vintage, New York, 1979, p The source 23 article also mentions the camera obscura device as one of the frames of reference in Rear Window. 26. The set and lighting arrangements for Rear Window are described in David Atkinson"s article, "Hitchcock"s Techniques Tell Rear Window Story", American Cinematographer, January 1990, pp This observation originates from Heikki Nyman"s ingenious and detailed analysis in the unpublished study: Heikki Nyman, Hitchcockin kosketus, Alfred Hitchcockin elokuvat, part III, Ibid., (source 24), p Octavio Paz gives the following description of Duchamp"s work: "The visitor goes through a low doorway, into a room somewhat on the small side, completely empty. No painting on the plastered walls. There are no windows. In the far wall, embedded in a brick portal topped by an arch, there is an old wooden door, worm-eaten, patched, and closed by a rough crossbar made of wood and nailed on with heavy spikes. In the top left-hand corner there is a little window that has also been closed up. The door sets its material doorness in the visitor s way with a sort of aplomb: dead end. The opposite of the hinges and their paradoxes. But if the visitor ventures nearer, he finds two small holes at eye level. If he goes even closer and dares to peep, he will see a scene he is not likely to forget. First of all, a brick wall with a slit in it, and through the slit, a wide open space, luminous and seemingly bewitched. Very near the beholder - but also very far away, on the "other side" - a naked girl, stretched on a kind of bed or pyre of branches and leaves, her face almost completely covered by the blond mass of her hair, her legs open and slightly bent, the pubes strangely smooth in contrast to the splendid abundance of her hair, her right arm out of the line of vision, her left slightly raised, the hand grasping a small gas lamp made of metal and glass. The little lamp glows in the brilliant three-o clock-in-the-afternoon light of this motionless, end-of-summer day. Fascinated by this challenge to our common sense - what is there less clear than light? - our glance wanders over the landscape: in the background, wooded hills, green and reddish; lower down, a small lake and a light mist on the lake. An inevitably blue sky. Two or three little clouds, also inevitably white. On the far right, among some rocks, a waterfall catches the light. Stillness: a portion of time held motionless. The immobility of the naked woman and of the landscape contrasts with the movement of the waterfall. The silence is absolute. All is real and verges on banality; all is unreal and verges - on what?" Octavio Paz, "*Water writes always in * plural", Marcel Duchamp, Anne d"harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine (ed.), Prestel, Munich, 1989, s Op.cit., p Ibid., (source 2), p Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995 (1990), p Ibid., (source 3), pp Alfred Hitchcock, "Why I am Afraid of The Dark" (1960), ibid., (source 16), s Alfred Hitchcock, "A Redbook Dialogue" (1963), ibid., (source 8), p Neil P. Hurley, Soul in Suspense: Hitchcock"s Fright and Delight, The Scarecrow Press, Inc., London, 1993, p Jean Renoir, Elämäni ja elokuvani, Love-Kirjat, Helsinki, 1980 (1974), p Ibid., (source 36), p Juhani Pallasmaa, valedictory lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology,
Film Analysis Essay Suggested Length: 4 to 5 pages Writers Workshop (Intermediate) Rode 2010
Film Analysis Essay Suggested Length: 4 to 5 pages Writers Workshop (Intermediate) Rode 2010 Alfred Hitchcock s Rear Window (1954) Director Dirctor Alfred Hitchcock Director of Photography Robert Burks
More informationCINEMATIC DEVICES GUIDE Alfred Hitchcock s Rear Window
CINEMATIC DEVICES GUIDE Alfred Hitchcock s Rear Window Look out for the following (and consider how they help shape meaning in the film) Camera shots Long shots: Contain landscape but gives the viewer
More informationIn what ways can Rear Window be seen as an essay on voyeurism?
In what ways can Rear Window be seen as an essay on voyeurism? In a Cold War affected America, when the public were encouraged to be suspicious of their neighbours, Alfred Hitchcock s 1954 thriller Rear
More informationPsycho- Notes. Opening Sequence- Hotel Room Sequence
Psycho- Notes Opening Credits Unsettling and disturbing atmosphere created by the music and the black and white lines that appear on the screen. Music is intense from the beginning. It s fast paced, unnerving
More informationScreenwriter s Café Alfred Hitchcock 1939 Lecture - Part II By Colleen Patrick
Screenwriter s Café Alfred Hitchcock 1939 Lecture - Part II By Colleen Patrick First I ll review what I covered in Part I of my analysis of Alfred Hitchcock s 1939 lecture for New York s Museum of Modern
More informationUnity & Duality, Mirrors & Shadows: Hitchcock s Psycho
Unity & Duality, Mirrors & Shadows: Hitchcock s Psycho When Marion Crane first enters the office of the Bates Motel, before her physical body even enters the frame, the camera initially captures her in
More informationElk Grove Unified School District Visual and Performing Arts Resources Theatre
Elk Grove Unified School District Visual and Performing Arts Resources Theatre Grade 4: Lesson 1 Title: Dramatizing Native American Folk Tales Standards Addressed Artistic Perception Processing, Analyzing,
More information1 EXT. STREAM - DAY 1
FADE IN: 1 EXT. STREAM - DAY 1 The water continuously moves downstream. Watching it can release a feeling of peace, of getting away from it all. This is soon interrupted when an object suddenly appears.
More informationLiterary and non literary aspects
THE PLAYWRIGHT The playwright -most central and most peripheral figure in the theatrical event -provides point of origin for production (the script) -in earlier periods playwrights acted as directors -today
More informationCharacterization Imaginary Body and Center. Inspired Acting. Body Psycho-physical Exercises
Characterization Imaginary Body and Center Atmosphere Composition Focal Point Objective Psychological Gesture Style Truth Ensemble Improvisation Jewelry Radiating Receiving Imagination Inspired Acting
More informationaster of Suspense: Alfred Hitchcock
IB DIPLOMA- VISUAL ARTS EXTENDED ESSAY aster of Suspense: Alfred Hitchcock How does Alfred Hitchcock visually guide viewers as he creates suspense in films such as ''The Pleasure Garden,''''The Lodger,''
More informationA2 Art Share Supporting Materials
A2 Art Share Supporting Materials Contents: Oral Presentation Outline 1 Oral Presentation Content 1 Exhibit Experience 4 Speaking Engagements 4 New City Review 5 Reading Analysis Worksheet 5 A2 Art Share
More informationThis is a vocabulary test. Please select the option a, b, c, or d which has the closest meaning to the word in bold.
The New Vocabulary Levels Test This is a vocabulary test. Please select the option a, b, c, or d which has the closest meaning to the word in bold. Example question see: They saw it. a. cut b. waited for
More informationMarriner thought for a minute. 'Very well, Mr Hewson, let's say this. If your story comes out in The Morning Times, there's five pounds waiting for
The Waxwork It was closing time at Marriner's Waxworks. The last few visitors came out in twos and threes through the big glass doors. But Mr Marriner, the boss, sat in his office, talking to a caller,
More informationA Sherlock Holmes story The Norwood Builder by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Chapter 1
Author: Daniel Barber Level: Intermediate Age: Young adults / Adults Time: 45 minutes (60 with optional activity) Aims: In this lesson, the students will: 1. discuss what they already know about Sherlock
More informationIt is Not Always Black and White. Alfred Hitchcock was in Hollywood more or less since His name, his profile, and
Kaitlyn Dane Professor Rankin Cata 171: Intro to Theater 3 May 2007 It is Not Always Black and White Alfred Hitchcock was in Hollywood more or less since 1940. His name, his profile, and his lugubrious
More informationIntroduction to Drama & the World of Shakespeare
Introduction to Drama & the World of Shakespeare What Is Drama? A play is a story acted out, live and onstage. Structure of a Drama Like the plot of a story, the plot of a drama follows a rising and falling
More informationRain Man. Rain man 1: Childhood MEMORIES
Rain man 1: Childhood MEMORIES Charlie Babbitt's mother died when he was two and he grew up alone with his father. Charlie is now an adult and his father has just died. Charlie has gone to his father's
More informationA Monst e r C a l l s
A Monst e r C a l l s The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. Conor was awake when it came. He d had a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare. The one he d been having a lot lately.
More informationDNA By DENNIS KELLY GCSE DRAMA \\ WJEC CBAC Ltd 2016
DNA B y D E N N I S K E L LY D ennis Kelly, who was born in 1970, wrote his first play, Debris, when he was 30. He is now an internationally acclaimed playwright and has written for film, television and
More informationGuide to Critical Assessment of Film
Guide to Critical Assessment of Film The following questions should help you in your critical evaluation of each film. Please keep in mind that sophisticated film, like literature, requires more than one
More informationNew Hollywood. Scorsese & Mean Streets
New Hollywood Scorsese & Mean Streets http://www.afi.com/100years/handv.aspx Metteurs-en-scene Martin Scorsese: Author of Mean Streets? Film as collaborative process? Andre Bazin Jean Luc Godard
More informationThe Scar Audio Commentary Transcript Film 2 The Mouth of the Shark
The Scar Audio Commentary Transcript Film 2 The Mouth of the Shark 00:00 Noor Afshan Mirza: My name is Noor Afshan. 00:02 Brad Butler: And my name s Brad, and we re looking at film two of The Scar. 00:10
More information1. Use interesting materials and/or techniques. Title: Medium: Comments:
ART CAN! Find pieces that match these aspects of Contemporary Art. 1. Use interesting materials and/or techniques. Title: Medium: Comments: 2. Express emotions without relying on recognizable images. Title:
More informationSymbols and Cinematic Symbolism
Symbols and Cinematic Symbolism ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Symbolism is a system or the ways people extend an object s meaning
More informationEditing. Editing is part of the postproduction. Editing is the art of assembling shots together to tell the visual story of a film.
FILM EDITING Editing Editing is part of the postproduction of a film. Editing is the art of assembling shots together to tell the visual story of a film. The editor gives final shape to the project. Editors
More informationPaint them Red. Considered to be one of the best gangster films of all time, Martin Scorsese s
Paige Dahlke 12/5/14 Introduction to Film Studies Paint them Red Considered to be one of the best gangster films of all time, Martin Scorsese s Goodfellas (Warner Bros., 1990) follows the experiences of
More informationActivity 1A: The Power of Sound
Activity 1A: The Power of Sound Students listen to recorded sounds and discuss how sounds can evoke particular images and feelings and how they can help tell a story. Students complete a Sound Scavenger
More informationWHO AM I? by Hal Ames
WHO AM I? by Hal Ames When I woke up, I was confused. Everything was different. I did not even remember going to sleep. As I looked around the room, nothing looked familiar. The room had dark curtains
More informationBURIED SECRETS. P.H Cook.
BURIED SECRETS By P.H Cook Gatortales@gmail.com FADE IN: EXT. HOUSE - DAY In the driveway, (32) washes his car. He s easy going with a friendly smile and positive nature. A likable guy... A very pregnant,
More informationThe gaze of early travel films: From measurement to attraction
The gaze of early travel films: From measurement to attraction Rianne Siebenga The gaze in colonial and early travel films has been an important aspect of analysis in the last 15 years. As Paula Amad has
More informationThis page has been downloaded from It is photocopiable, but all copies must be complete pages.
Live and Let Die Ian Fleming The story step by step 1 Listen to the beginning of Chapter 1 on your CD/download (from One morning to Have you heard about him? ) and complete the table with each character
More informationThe Girl without Hands. ThE StOryTelleR. Based on the novel of the Brother Grimm
The Girl without Hands By ThE StOryTelleR Based on the novel of the Brother Grimm 2016 1 EXT. LANDSCAPE - DAY Once upon a time there was a Miller, who has little by little fall into poverty. He had nothing
More informationTHE IRON MAN VISUAL STORY
THE IRON MAN VISUAL STORY This visual resource is for children and young adults visiting the Unicorn Theatre to see a performance of THE IRON MAN. This visual story is intended to help prepare you for
More informationSALLY GALL. looking up
SALLY GALL looking up STEVE MILLER: I saw your show Aerial and it blew me away. No one would guess that it s laundry. Without any context for the series, a number of people guess sea creatures first. Was
More informationA Short Guide to Writing about Film
GLOBAL EDITION A Short Guide to Writing about Film NINTH EDITION Timothy Corrigan 62 ChaPTer 3 analyzing and WriTing about films Figure 3.04 Stanley Kubrick s Full Metal Jacket (1987) presents characters
More informationPROFESSION WITHOUT DISCIPLINE WOULD BE BLIND
PROFESSION WITHOUT DISCIPLINE WOULD BE BLIND The thesis of this paper is that even though there is a clear and important interdependency between the profession and the discipline of architecture it is
More informationBEFORE I GO TO SLEEP. S J Watson LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND JOHANNESBURG
BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP S J Watson LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND JOHANNESBURG 3 I was born tomorrow today I live yesterday killed me Parviz Owsia 7 Part One Today 9 The bedroom is strange. Unfamiliar. I
More informationYear 13 COMPARATIVE ESSAY STUDY GUIDE Paper
Year 13 COMPARATIVE ESSAY STUDY GUIDE Paper 2 2015 Contents Themes 3 Style 9 Action 13 Character 16 Setting 21 Comparative Essay Questions 29 Performance Criteria 30 Revision Guide 34 Oxford Revision Guide
More information4 Complete the sentences with pronouns from the list. Example: A Did John call me? B Yes. He called you at six.
GRAMMAR 1 Complete the dialogue with words from the list. You can use the words more than once. there s are it a some any an Dan Maya Dan Maya Dan Maya Do you live in a town or 1 village, Maya? Oh, 2 s
More information56 Fiction Prose Red Lighting and Some Jazz Ryan Woods
56 Fiction Prose Red Lighting and Some Jazz Ryan Woods I find myself, as I step through the shaded door, suddenly in a world entirely different from the one I left behind outside. Jazz, continuous jazz.
More informationGUESSES AND SURPRISES
NARRATIVE AND HYPERMEDIA GUESSES AND SURPRISES Paul Klee, Angelus Novus A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.
More informationVOCABULARY. Working with animals / A solitary child / I have not seen him for ages
VOCABULARY Acting school Agent Bedsit Behaviour Bustling By the way Capital Career Ceremony Commuter Couple Course Crossword Crowd Department store District Entertainment Estate agent's Housing estate
More informationGUIA DE ESTUDIO PARA EL ETS DE SEGUNDO SEMESTRE.
GUIA DE ESTUDIO PARA EL ETS DE SEGUNDO SEMESTRE. UNIDAD 7. 1 Underline the correct word or phrase. Example: We was / were at school yesterday. 1 Was / Were Jack and Elaine on holiday last week? 2 The shops
More informationMrs. Bradley 7 th Grade English
Mrs. Bradley 7 th Grade English Introduction Have a look at this extract, "The men walked down the streets to the mine with their heads bent close to their chests. In groups of five or six they scurried
More informationInstant Words Group 1
Group 1 the a is you to and we that in not for at with it on can will are of this your as but be have the a is you to and we that in not for at with it on can will are of this your as but be have the a
More informationST. NICHOLAS COLLEGE RABAT MIDDLE SCHOOL HALF YEARLY EXAMINATIONS FEBRUARY 2017
ST. NICHOLAS COLLEGE RABAT MIDDLE SCHOOL HALF YEARLY EXAMINATIONS FEBRUARY 2017 LEVEL 6-7 YEAR 7 ENGLISH TIME: 2 hours Name: Class: Teacher: Marks Oral Assessment Listening Comprehension Written Paper
More informationGlossary of Literary Terms
Page 1 of 9 Glossary of Literary Terms allegory A fictional text in which ideas are personified, and a story is told to express some general truth. alliteration Repetition of sounds at the beginning of
More informationLanguage Paper 1 Knowledge Organiser
Language Paper 1 Knowledge Organiser Abstract noun A noun denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object, e.g. truth, danger, happiness. Discourse marker A word or phrase whose function
More informationAural Architecture: The Missing Link
Aural Architecture: The Missing Link By Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter bblesser@alum.mit.edu Blesser Associates P.O. Box 155 Belmont, MA 02478 Popular version of paper 3pAA1 Presented Wednesday 12
More informationYOU LL BE IN MY HEART. Diogo dos Santos Figueira. Leiria, Portugal
YOU LL BE IN MY HEART By Diogo dos Santos Figueira diogo_quaresma20@hotmail.com Leiria, Portugal FADE IN: EXT. S MANSION - NIGHT It s a rainy cold night. The winds blows strong, the trees seem to dance
More informationEXAMPLE THREE. Commentary. Question A2 A/B BOUNDARY ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Commentary 23
EXAMPLE THREE Commentary 23 Question 23 25 Commentary This question provides evidence of assessment objectives AO1 and AO2ii. The question is set in the context of an open book examination. Candidates
More informationFilm, Television & New Media 2019 v1.2
Film, Television & New Media 2019 v1.2 Case study investigation This sample has been compiled by the QCAA to assist and support teachers to match evidence in student responses to the characteristics described
More informationAnswer the following questions: 1) What reasons can you think of as to why Macbeth is first introduced to us through the witches?
Macbeth Study Questions ACT ONE, scenes 1-3 In the first three scenes of Act One, rather than meeting Macbeth immediately, we are presented with others' reactions to him. Scene one begins with the witches,
More informationA Different Kind of School
56 HONEYSUCKLE Before you read Do you know these words? If you don t, find out their meanings: bandage, crutch, cripple, honour, misfortune, system. Look at the pictures in this unit and guess in what
More informationEditing Emotion. Overview. Learning Outcomes. Preparation and Materials LESSON PLAN
LESSON PLAN Level: Grades 5-9 Author: Duration: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education MediaSmarts 2-3 hours Editing Emotion This lesson is part of USE, UNDERSTAND & CREATE: A Digital Literacy Framework
More informationSocial Isolation and Communal Paranoia in Surveillance Narrative Films Surveillance as an
Social Isolation and Communal Paranoia in Surveillance Narrative Films Surveillance as an operative network in Hitchcock's Rear Window, Coppola's The Conversation and Haneke's Caché by Heather Poole A
More informationCambridge International Examinations Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education. Published
Cambridge International Examinations Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE 0511/31 Paper 3 Listening Core ay/june 2016 ARK SCHEE aximum ark: 30
More informationCollege and Career Readiness Anchor Standards K-12 Montana Common Core Reading Standards (CCRA.R)
College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards K-12 Montana Common Core Reading Standards (CCRA.R) The K 12 standards on the following pages define what students should understand and be able to do by the
More informationLesson Objectives. Core Content Objectives. Language Arts Objectives
Lesson Objectives Snow White and the 8 Seven Dwarfs Core Content Objectives Students will: Describe the characters, setting, and plot in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Demonstrate familiarity with the
More informationCANADIAN BROADCAST STANDARDS COUNCIL PRAIRIE REGIONAL PANEL. CKCK-TV re Promos for the Sopranos and an Advertisement for the Watcher
CANADIAN BROADCAST STANDARDS COUNCIL PRAIRIE REGIONAL PANEL CKCK-TV re Promos for the Sopranos and an Advertisement for the Watcher (CBSC Decision 00/01-0058) Decided August 20, 2001 D. Braun (Chair),
More informationLITERATURE IN ENGLISH 0475/04. Paper 4 Unseen For examination from 2020
Cambridge IGCSE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 0475/04 Paper 4 Unseen For examination from 2020 SPECIMEN PAPER 1 hour 15 minutes *0123456789* You must answer on the enclosed answer booklet. You will need: Answer
More informationAlfred Hitchcock. Author, Filmmaker, Director, and sometimes Actor
Alfred Hitchcock Author, Filmmaker, Director, and sometimes Actor Biography 1899-1980 Born in England, but died a US citizen in Los Angeles, CA Roman Catholic His parents were greengrocers He is the youngest
More informationANDRÁS PÁLFFY INTERVIEWS FRANK ESCHER AND RAVI GUNEWARDENA
ANDRÁS PÁLFFY INTERVIEWS FRANK ESCHER AND RAVI GUNEWARDENA When we look at the field of museum planning within architectural practice and its developments over the last few years, we note that, on one
More information[Sur] face: The Subjectivity of Space
COL FAY [Sur] face: The Subjectivity of Space Figure 1. col Fay, [Sur] face (2011). Interior view of exhibition capturing the atmospheric condition of light, space and form. Photograph: Emily Hlavac-Green.
More informationSentences for the vocabulary of The Queen and I
Sentences for the vocabulary of The Queen and I 1. I got in the room, I heard a noise. 2. F is the quality of being free. 3. Curso del 63 is a TV program where some students live and study in a b. 4. A
More informationEXERCISE A: Match the idioms in column A with their meanings in column B. 2. at death s door b. feeling very happy or glorious
Look at the pictures. Can you guess what the topic idiom is about? IDIOMS 1G EXERCISE A: Match the idioms in column A with their meanings in column B. A B 1. a bag of bones a. very thin 2. at death s door
More informationBPS Interim Assessments SY Grade 2 ELA
BPS Interim SY 17-18 BPS Interim SY 17-18 Grade 2 ELA Machine-scored items will include selected response, multiple select, technology-enhanced items (TEI) and evidence-based selected response (EBSR).
More informationVICTORIA. MAX (Emerging from the French doors.) Probably because we were. Unless it s slipped your mind, we only arrived last night.
A hotel room exterior with French doors opening up to a decorative patio overlooking the sea. At rise, enters through the French doors, walks downstage to the edge of the balcony and takes a large inhalation
More informationCinema and Telecommunication / Distance and Aura
Cinema and Telecommunication / Distance and Aura Film/Telecommunication Benjamin/Virilio Lev Manovich If Walter Benjamin had one true intellectual descendant who extended his inquiries into the second
More informationSpatial Formations. Installation Art between Image and Stage.
Spatial Formations. Installation Art between Image and Stage. An English Summary Anne Ring Petersen Although much has been written about the origins and diversity of installation art as well as its individual
More information1 1 Listen to Chapter 1. Complete the table with words you hear. The first one is an example. Check your answers on pp.6 10 or in the answer key.
Owl Hall Robert Campbell The story step by step 1 1 Listen to Chapter 1. Complete the table with words you hear. The first one is an example. Check your answers on pp.6 10 or in the answer key. Parts of
More informationContents. Introduction. What this visual story will cover:
Contents What this visual story will cover: - Introduction - Information about the theatre - About the play - Content notes (light/sound) - Play contents Introduction A Relaxed Performance of the National
More informationThe Existential Act- Interview with Juhani Pallasmaa
Volume 7 Absence Article 11 1-1-2016 The Existential Act- Interview with Juhani Pallasmaa Datum Follow this and additional works at: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/datum Part of the Architecture Commons Recommended
More informationDirections: Today you will be taking a short test using what you have learned about reading fiction texts.
Name: Date: Teacher: Reading Fiction Lesson Quick Codes for this set: LZ925, LZ926, LZ927, LZ928, LZ929, LZ930, LZ931 Common Core State Standards addressed: RL.6.1, RL.6.10, RL.6.2, RL.6.5 Lesson Text:
More informationI Miss You Honorable Mention
Izayah Ingram-Hatchett Daniel Boone High School Karin Orchard I Miss You Honorable Mention Setting: A typical 2 story house in the suburbs Characters: : s husband, newspaper editor : s wife, Housekeeper
More informationDark and Purple and Beautiful
Dark and Purple and Beautiful Paul Arnaud I open the fridge and my drinks are gone and I think that it s Sara or James, but they re nowhere to be seen and I m still sober and we re not leaving till two.
More informationUnit 2 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Listening skills Unit 2 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Teaching notes Starter: Clue in a box: Prepare a cardboard box filled with the words printed and cut up from Resource 1 Pass the parcel words: slippers,
More informationTest 1- Level 4 TAL Test 2019 (1 hour 15 minutes) Part A. USE OF ENGLISH: Multiple Choice (10 questions) Choose the correct option (A,B or C ) for
Test 1- Level 4 TAL Test 2019 (1 hour 15 minutes) Part A. USE OF ENGLISH: Multiple Choice (10 questions) Choose the correct option (A,B or C ) for each question. 1. I have started running every day I want
More informationWith prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text. Grade 1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
Literature: Key Ideas and Details College and Career Readiness (CCR) Anchor Standard 1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual
More informationThe following suggestion from that came up in the discussions following:
It should be easy to write dialogue. Everybody improvises dialogue all the time: in offices, coffee shops, schools, on buses and in homes. Every conversation that happens is basically dialogue. So if we
More informationSYRACUSE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
SYRACUSE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT Grade 07 Unit 01 Assessment A Grade 07 Unit 01 Reading Literature: Character Name Date Teacher In this excerpt from the novel Tamar, 15-year-old Tamar reminisces about the
More informationMisc Fiction Irony Point of view Plot time place social environment
Misc Fiction 1. is the prevailing atmosphere or emotional aura of a work. Setting, tone, and events can affect the mood. In this usage, mood is similar to tone and atmosphere. 2. is the choice and use
More informationShadow of a Doubt. The Business of Life. (1943) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
The Business of Life Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 2016 Educational Guidance Institute 11 Shadow of a Doubt Shadow of a Doubt is Alfred Hitchcock s own personal favorite film according
More informationNotes #1: ELEMENTS OF A STORY
Notes #1: ELEMENTS OF A STORY Be sure to label your notes by number. This way you will know if you are missing notes, you ll know what notes you need, etc. Include the date of the notes given. Elements
More informationMusic is the Remedy. was near the establishment of jazz (Brown 153+). Serving in the United States army during the
Paniagua 1 Elsa Paniagua David Rodriguez English 102 15 October 2013 Music is the Remedy Yusef Komunyakaa was born the year of 1947 during the Civil Rights Movement which was near the establishment of
More informationSection I. Quotations
Hour 8: The Thing Explainer! Those of you who are fans of xkcd s Randall Munroe may be aware of his book Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, in which he describes a variety of things using
More informationA Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Chapter 4
Author: Daniel Barber Level: Intermediate Age: Young adults / Adults Time: 45 minutes (60 with optional activity) Aims: In this lesson, students will: 1. take part in a quiz to review the story so far;
More informationExamination papers and Examiners reports E040. Victorians. Examination paper
Examination papers and Examiners reports 2008 033E040 Victorians Examination paper 85 Diploma and BA in English 86 Examination papers and Examiners reports 2008 87 Diploma and BA in English 88 Examination
More informationProut School Summer Reading 2016
Prout School Summer Reading 2016 ELL One Book ALL 1 ST YEAR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS WILL READ: So Much to Tell You by John Marsden ~ Scarred, literally, by her past, Marina has withdrawn into silence. Then,
More informationYou are about to begin rehearsals for a production of Beauty and the Beast. Rehearsing refers to the
CONGRATULATIONS! You are about to begin rehearsals for a production of Beauty and the Beast. Rehearsing refers to the process of learning and practicing a dramatic work (such as a play or musical) in order
More informationThe Black Book Series: The Lost Art of Magical Charisma (The Unreleased Volume: Beyond The 4 Ingredients)
The Black Book Series: The Lost Art of Magical Charisma (The Unreleased Volume: Beyond The 4 Ingredients) A few years ago I created a report called Super Charisma. It was based on common traits that I
More informationFILM + MUSIC. Despite the fact that music, or sound, was not part of the creation of cinema, it was
Kleidonopoulos 1 FILM + MUSIC music for silent films VS music for sound films Despite the fact that music, or sound, was not part of the creation of cinema, it was nevertheless an integral part of the
More informationQuiz1 Total mark: (36)
English Department First Semester Date: Name: Day : Quiz1 Total mark: (36) Grade: 10 th Grade SAT Circle the letter of the best answer below (26 marks) 1. Read this passage from Contents of the Dead Man
More informationQuestion 2: What is the term for the consumer of a text, either read or viewed? Answer: The audience
Castle Got the answer? Be the first to stand with your group s flag. Got it correct? MAKE or BREAK a castle, yours or any other group s. The group with the most castles wins. Enjoy! Oral Visual Texts Level
More informationTHE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR
148 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR BETSY PAUL C. Characters Renu : a nineteen year old girl, extremely interesting and attractive, than beautiful. Man : a six pack TDH (tall, dark, handsome) twenty six year
More information2016 Summer Assignment: Honors English 10
2016 Summer Assignment: Honors English 10 Teacher: Mrs. Leandra Ferguson Contact Information: leandraf@villagechristian.org Due Date: Monday, August 8 Text to be Read: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Instructions:
More informationCALL OF THE REVOLUTION
CALL OF THE REVOLUTION by LEONID ANDREYEV adapted for the stage by WALTER WYKES CHARACTERS CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Call of the Revolution is subject to a royalty. It
More informationThe Mona Lisa Effect. Utah State University. From the SelectedWorks of Gene Washington. gene washington, Utah State University
Utah State University From the SelectedWorks of Gene Washington 2011 The Mona Lisa Effect gene washington, Utah State University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/gene_washington/149/ THE MONA LISA
More informationGAGOSIAN GALLERY. Gregory Crewdson
Vogue Italia January 8, 2016 GAGOSIAN GALLERY Gregory Crewdson An interview by Alessia Glaviano with Gregory Crewdson on show at Gagosian from January 28th with the new series Cathedral of the Pines Alessia
More information