Rear Window-Jeremy Brinson

The sound construction Hitchcock crafted in Rear Window was truly a great feat. His decision to make the sound realistic reinforces his decision not to have an omniscient point of view. Take for instance the points in the film where Jimmy is looking across the way into Larz’s apartment, we experience the sound the way Jimmy or anybody in his position would- catching every other word, and only if it were a shout. This leaves us with only the visual actions committed in that apartment as the only clues to go by. The subtext associated with the lack of sound we hear not only applies to when we spy on Larz, but also when surveying the other people in the nearby vicinity. We only catch bits of conversations, reminding us that we are only getting one side or instance of a person’s life. These snatches of sound that we happen to hear as we look on symbolize the sneakiness of the deed we are conducting. The audience and Jimmy are spies, robbing people of their privacy by looking at them hidden in our fourth dimension and Jimmy in his apartment. The way that we happen upon these brief muffled moments of conversation or sound originating from our current target is a metaphor for the way we are stealing their privacy away from them. The fact that it’s normally muffled sounds we hear represent how we remain hidden as we eavesdrop, depending on how much we hear represents the level of thievery or amount of snooping we’re doing, and the clarity of what we hear signifies if we pulled off a big heist or just came away with chump change. This treatment of sound also helps to build the dramatic suspense of the film. If we were to hear everything that a person we were spying on said, it would take away the suspense and edge from the movie. However, by only catching a small portion of the whole of a person’s life, the interest of the audience is piqued and we drawn in and held there from beginning to end, trying to analyze and understand the life of one or all of the neighbors.