Yi Zhong

Christopher Craig

Ways of Seeing

03.31.2019

Women as Suspense

“Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”

---Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock was well-known for his obsession for women, especially blonde, and he himself also did

not bother to infuse it fully to his works. Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Kim Novak, Grace Kelly... They

are widely perceived as the “vases” in the narrative, beautiful to look at and fragile. As said by Hitchcock

himself, they are “the perfect bearer for suspense”.

In Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, the author argues that in classic

Hollywood, women are usually shown as an image in the view of the male protagonist, an object in a

passive relation to men. The essay opened up a whole new insight for feminism in order to deconstruct

conventional cinema that has been used to implant male chauvinism to the society, and Hitchcock’s

masterpiece Rear Window is employed as a major subject for analysis in the essay, in which the author

points out that the only time when Jeff really develops strong affection for Lisa is when she is in the lens

across the courtyard, as if the meaning of her existence is sublimed.

While the essay’s social-psycological application to the film has been widely received, it also

provides other potentials, the application to suspense being one of them.

In America, you respect him because he shoots scenes of love as if they were scenes of murder. We
respect him because he shoots scenes of murder like scenes of love.” ---Francois Truffaut

This piece of commentary from Truffaut is a widely-quoted impression on Hitchcock’s films, but the

meaning and reason behind it have remained unexplained and rather confusing. However, although written

decades after Rear Window or even this quote, Mulvey’s essay might offer us a convincing explanation to

at least part of Truffaut’s riddle:

Women are not only the bearer of fear, they are fear themselves.

Whether the argument accords with Hitchcock’s original intention is, of course, questionable, since the

opening quote of Hitchcock does not show, if not oppose to, any of it. However, as most people would

agree, once the work is off the hand of the creator, the receiver can take the liberty of interpreting and

analyzing it. For a film as rich and thought-evoking as Rear Window, and a director as masterful and

mysterious as Hitchcock, it will be a loss giving up on any thread that might lead to more discoveries.

Moreover, in this case, when we are looking at a film from 65 years ago, the creator himself is no more

than an object for study as his creation.

In Rear Window, women have been portrayed by Hitchcock as the source of the protagonist’s fear. Or at

least, his way of portraiture of women, especially Lisa, greatly resembles with those of the antagonists in

his films.

In general, the male protagonist is covered in the mist of incompetence, specifically the inferiority to

his lover, who embodies beauty, success and intelligence, all of which can potentially remind him of that

inferiority. In the film this imbalance is represented as Jeff’s temporal disability. Lisa becomes a threat.

(Personally I put the castration theory in question for lack of support, but its application to some aspects

can be instrumental to further studies as mentioned later in the text)

In the film, Lisa’s first presence is in words by Stella and Jeff. “She’s too perfect.” said Jeff.
 As mentioned by Hitchcock, “there is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” Instead of

amazing the audience with a straightforward appearance, Hitchcock lets texts come in first to add on to the

suspense of this women.

Minutes after that, Lisa’s first actual appearance is precedented with a terrifying shadow on Jeff’s

face. And then Jeff sees the full frontal face of Lisa moving toward him. In the whole sequence, the

audience would not be surprised if Lisa was replaced by the murderer himself, because the way of

portraying her simply fits better with villains, but all she wants to do is kiss Jeff. In terms of cinematic

approaches, it is unusual, especially in classical Hollywood, to capture the heroine’s frontal face, because it

makes the face flat and lack dimension, not to mention that this is the first shot of the ever beautiful Grace

Kelly. Comparing to it, in Casablanca, Ingrid Bergman even had the power to prefer her left profile to her

right profile and had most of her still shots changed according to it, just to make sure that the woman on

screen is as beautiful as she could be. Here in Rear Window, the only explanation will be that the action of

love along with Lisa herself becomes a threat to the protagonist.

Another small detail comes when Jeff interrupts Tom Doyle’s gaze on Miss Torso and asked him

about his wife. The smile is replaced by a rather mixed expression on his face. There is boredom, and there

is fear as well, as if he had seen his wife at that exact moment.

The suspense is generated, again in occasions almost irrelevant to the main plot, when Tom cannot

keep his eyes off that pink dress that Lisa has brought for the night. The dress somehow becomes a weapon

by a murderer, drawing all the attentions. Again, love and sex become intriguing, while the potential

uncovering of them generate suspense and fear.

How far does a girl have to go before you’ll notice her? --Lisa in Rear Window

Mulvey points out two ways in which men try to escape the threat of castration, fetishistic scopophilia

and voyeurism.
 In the context of Mulvey’s theory, only when Lisa is breaking certain laws sneaking into the

murderer’s house and is seen in the lens of Jeff’s camera, is Jeff able to develop a true affection for her.

However, it can also be interpreted that men’s fear of women is compromised mainly by distancing

them, just as what men would do when they saw a bear or a tiger.

According to Susan Sontag in her essay “On Photography”, the camera has become a tool for people

to isolate themselves from what they see, distancing it mentally.

In the film, obviously, Jeff’s camera has the same usage.

A rather similar alternative is also employed to indicate the distance: frame. Every time Lisa comes in

with a new set of dress, she would pose herself for Jeff as well as the audience, and every single time she

would stand in the frame of a door. The door keeps the heroine in another dimension from the protagonist,

so that the distant is achieved. In those occasions, Jeff is often aroused, as shown, for example, when he

saw Lisa standing in the door frame in that pink dress,

Sontag’s theory does not only apply to men, and Grace Kelly’s beauty itself is as objective as people

could possibly imagine. Fear is gone, and beauty can be appreciated. It might also be as simple as that.

Based on Mulvey’s essay, it is easy to interpret her view of the relation between male and female as in

opposition, with male in the demanding position. However, from a historical point of view, we also need to

admit that this relation, largely attributed to male, might be the outcome of male’s self-defensive, and

ultimately of male’s fear, and while the reason of this specific fear is at least partly sexual, male’s action in

response to it can also be supported by asexual theories. In addition, while Hitchcock has been criticized

more and more since Mulvey’s essay was widely received, based on those suspense set-ups around women

and love, we should also remain in question about this master’s actual intention and attitude, at least in his

films.
 Works Cited

Jeffries, Stuart. The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 May 2015,

www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/12/when-hitchcock-met-truffaut-hitchcock-truffaut-

documentary-cannes.

Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures, 1989, pp. 14

Jordan, James, and Susan Sontag. The Antioch Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 1978, p. 248., doi:10.2307/4638051.