"Perhaps only one other filmmaker -- Walt Disney -- lived to see his name become synonymous with a certain type of screen entertainment: In Hitchcock's case, it was stylish, sophisticated suspense, laced with humor and romance" (Maltin, 1994, n. p.). Alfred Hitchcock started in the movie making business in 1920, before there was color, before there were "talkies", and this greatly influenced the way he directed and filmed a movie -- the way he "saw" the movie. His experience helped him to understand that a picture is worth more than a thousand words of dialogue. According to Maltin, Hitchcock "proved that the presence of sound was no reason not to continue to tell stories with visual panache" (1994, n. p.). Rear Window was not only a suspenseful movie that told a story with "visual panache", it was a commentary on the spectator in a society of spectators -- who are actors in their turn.
Cameras are prevalent everywhere, from disposable Kodaks and home video cameras to professional photography equipment and movie cameras to wireless cameras used for security purposes. In a society like this it's easy to feel, sometimes, as if one is always living in front of one of those cameras. Conversely, movies and television and security cameras are so extensive through out society and so deep-seated now that it's easy to succumb to what Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) refers to in Rear Window (1954) as "rear window ethics". "Rear window ethics" is that ability or habit or compulsion to sit back and watch T.V or a movie or neighbors and pass judgement on the display without ever really knowing what is going on. These ethics, this voyeurism is just what Alfred Hitchcock was trying to explore in his movie about a photographer, L. B. "Jeff" Jeffries, who is stuck at home with little else to do other than watch his neighbors from his rear window. According to Taylor, "in Rear Window Hitchcock presents a hero who is in the same position the d...