Rear Window

Peeping Toms are welcomed!

"Rear Window" comes very close to be the perfect Hitchcock film that illustrates nearly all his great abilities...

Hitchcock demonstrates in "Rear Window" that he is a great voyeur, that he loves to spy on his characters making each viewer into a voyeur, forcing audience to see everything from his hero's point of view... James Stewart is hold up in his Manhattan two rooms apartment with a broken leg... He passes his time spying on his neighbors through back window in an orgy of voyeurism...

Speaking of technical challenge, "Rear Window" is Hitchcock prototype... Most of the film is shot from one confined set... It is also notably theatrical since it takes place in one room...

Hitchcock forces limitations on himself, as he did in "Lifeboat" when he shot entirely on a restricted set, in only one boat... And in "Rope" (his first Technicolor film) where the single setting for the production had only walls and furniture...

Having restricted his movements, Hitchcock is demanded to be ingenious in order to keep curiosity alive... He builds a realistic courtyard of apartments with inhabitants in it, and the restriction becomes a potency and the technique a fascinating example of what he chooses to call "pure cinema."

Welcome to the neighbourhood kids.

Hitchcock's camera tracks out through the windows... It never goes inside the apartments... We never see close-ups of the characters... We can only see what Stewart sees... We feel like we are watching people through a window instead of in a movie...

Hitchcock doesn't use any kind of music... We hear natural sounds, occasional live music played in the surrounding apartment...

"Rear Window" describes Hitchcock at his best for the way it works on several levels, yet hides its own complexity... Stewart, tied in too by pressure from his high society girl who loves him and wants to marry him... Everything he sees out is related to this problem... He avoids to discuss marriage with her, though he himself does not seem to realize it...

All the while, the people in the 31 apartments that he can see live out their little lives… The tormented middle-aged bachelor, composer/songwriter; the couple who beats the heat by sleeping on a fire escape; the newlyweds and lovers; the tragic "Miss Lonelyhearts" and her fantasies of entertaining gentlemen callers; the hearing-impaired sculptor working day and night; the vivacious and sexy blonde dancer "Miss Torso" who does suggestive routines in bikini tops and, most important, the hysterical "nagging wife" - lying in bed - and her grouchy fed-up husband, a jewelry salesman...

50's sexploitation.

We're having a live porn show in front of our noses honey.

One 'great shot' reveals just how involved Stewart has become in their lives when Miss Lovelyheart - in her romantic dinner for two - raises her glass in a toast to her imaginary lover and Stewart raises his glass as well...

The urban backyard setting is the night city terrain of "Rear Window," a night city shattered by the sharp sound of a loud female scream and the sound of breaking glass...

Hitchcok presents Stewart who sees (or think he sees) what he is powerless to stop... The insidious salesman strangely attracts Stewart's attention... His Passtime becomes an obsession after he suspects that he has murdered his ailing wife and specially when he notices that she is missing... His ravishing fiancée (Grace Kelly) and his nurse (Thelma Ritter) warn him that voyeurism is a crime and is dangerous... But Stewart persists, eventually he was turned on ... This explain perfectly his specific use of a huge zoom lens to do his peeping as he monitors the murderer's activities... The murderer and his wife became subject of Stewart's parody with the "too perfect, too talented, too sophisticated," Grace Kelly...

There was a time were women worn nothing but natural beauty.

"say, you won't believe what I saw today through the window"

"Rear Window" is visually very strong... Hitchcock designs the film in such a way so that his view is our view... He manipulates our emotions because he knows perfectly his work... He has the film synchronized in his mind... Shooting and editing are, for him, a simple mechanical phase... The creativity has all taken place before...

The first shot of "Rear Window" is a perfect example of this reality - as his many typical first shots - for the way it visually transmits the whole complex to the audience...

Hitchcock is a master at using his camera to create suspense... Like Stewart, we are restricted in movements, paralyzed inside the apartment, immobile, trapped in a room where we are anxious and uncertain... There is no way we can warn the outcome... This is what 'suspense' is all about—not surprise... An effect of intense and prolonged expectancy, lacking all help in the state of knowing that we possess but the characters do not... And, of course, all this great suspense is created by only 'visual' means...

This man has become some serious fapper!

Stewart gives the performance of his life behaving at ease... He was the perfect Hitchcock character: a voyeur by profession, an unpretentious photo journalist who becomes caught in a terrifying event...

When you see the film, feel the menacing 'look' of the murderer staring those evil eyes at you... And don't forget to catch Alfred Hitchcok in his customary cameo appearance, this time repairing a clock... Enjoy! 

Here is the original movie trailer:

The Birds

Do not spoil it!

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of lots of classic films and TV shows has made its way to Spam Alternative to level up the high amounts of indecency depicted on this blog as actual films. If you want a thriller, Hitchchock's got it, if you want horror, Hitchcock's got it if you want a masterpiece, Hitchcock's got it.

Despite spending most of his career within the realms of the thriller genre, Alfred Hitchcock hasn't restricted himself where variation is concerned. Most of his best work represents a different type of thriller, and The Birds is no different. It is often said that Psycho is Hitchcock's first foray into the horror side of the thriller, and it is indeed; but it's not the complete horror film that The Birds is. Often cited as an obvious influence for many posterior horror films, The Birds follows the story of sweet San Francisco Blonded Melanie Daniels as she travels to the seaside town of Bodega Bay (Actually the San Francisco Bay) with a pair of lovebirds (those birds ruled those days, if the movie was shot in 2010 she should have brought Angry Brids instead haha) for the guy she's got a crush on, Mr. Mitch Brenner, an eligible bachelor that she met in a pet shop in San Francisco. However, while there the birds of the coastal town begin to attack the residents and so begins a terrifying tale of man's feathered friends waging a war against humanity for apparently no reason at all...

Sophisticated San Francisco Girl.

A Beatiful couple knows its way in fashion trends.

Smoking was cool for Hollywood some time ago.

It could be said that the plot of The Birds is somehow ridiculous, and probably in a way it is. The idea of birds, (a type of animal that is known for not being aggressive towards us, human beings), attacking humans despite living with us for millions of years is preposterous and is never likely to happen, ever I think. However; it is here where the film's horror strength lies. Birds live with us in harmony; we're so used to them that for the most part we don't even realize that they're there, and the idea of something that we don't notice suddenly becoming violent towards ourselves is truly terrifying. Especially when that something is unstoppable, as the birds are portrayed as being in this film. The fact that the birds' motive is never really explained only serves in making it more terrifying, as it would appear that somewhere along the line they've just decided to attack. Of course, the film could be interpreted as having Melanie's arrival or the presence of the lovebirds as the cause for it all; but we don't really know for sure, though we can speculate.

This bounds the film in reality as if there was a reason given, it might be improbable; but there's no true reason given (although there are several theories around the circle of movie freaks), so it can't be improbable! The first forty minutes of the film feature hardly any - if any - horror at all. Hitchcock spends this part of the movie developing the characters and installing their situation in the viewers' minds, so that when the horror does finally come along, it has a definite potency that it would not have had otherwise. In fact, at first the birds themselves come across as a co-star in their own movie as there are brief references towards them, but they never get their full dues. However, once the horror does start, it comes thick and fast.

Bodega Bay's Teacher.

"a Plan is forming"

"Thank god I found this phone booth, or else those birds would have screwed my hairdo"

Hitchcock, the master craftsman as always, uses his famous montage effects and never really shows you anything; but because you're being bombarded with so many different shots, you'd never realize it. Many people have tried to copy this technique, but most have failed. Hitchcock, however, has it down to an art and this is maybe the film that shows off that talent the best. There are numerous moments of suspense as well, many of which are truly nail biting. We see the birds amassing and ready to strike - but they don't. And this is much more frightening than showing an attack from the off. Hitchcock knows this. The final thirty minutes of The Birds is perhaps the most thrilling of his entire oeuvre. First, Hitchcock gives us an intriguing situation where numerous inhabitants of the town give their views on the events, and also explains the birds' situation with humans, even giving the audience an angle of expertise from an ornithologist's point of view. He then follows it up with a truly breathtaking sequence of horror that hasn't been matched since for relentless shock value.

Limited edition doll.

Hitchcock has made many great films, and this certainly stands up as one of them. Here, Hitchcock gives a lesson in film directing and creates a truly macabre piece of work in the process. I dread to think what the state of cinema would have been if Hitchcock had never picked up a camera, but luckily for us; he most certainly did and I do thank him for this is one of my top ten horror films ever, in fact I'd say this is my number 1 in the list.

Here's the movie trailer with Mr. Hitchcock himself:

And here a more down to earth movie trailer: