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Opening Shot Analysis of Rear Window

In: Film and Music
Opening Shot Analysis of Rear Window

The opening scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window essentially acts as one long establishing shot — only rather than establishing just the location of a scene, it establishes the entire film in more ways than one. One particularly important shot in the scene, beginning 00:02:36 into the film, tells the audience much of what it will need to know about Rear Window’s setting, characters, and themes.
The long take begins with an alarm clock waking up a couple, sleeping out on their balcony. As the camera moves from window to window around the courtyard, we see a few brief snippets of characters’ lives. And finally, the audience sees inside the apartment that has been its point of view all along. Mise-en-scene, framing, and cinematography all play a role in this shot. But while the first device reveals information about the film’s setting and some of its major characters, cinematography and framing are the dominant devices because they illustrate what truly lies at the center of Rear Window: its themes.
An attentive viewer could gather troves of important information about the story and its characters from the mise-en-scene in this shot. In the audience’s brief tour around the courtyard, it sees a number of things that provide a set-up for the following narrative. The shot opens on a couple waking up to an alarm clock from a nap on their balcony. They are wearing sparse and light clothing, rubbing sweat off their foreheads, and have bright natural light from above shining on them. This immediately suggests that the story will take place during a very hot time, which provides reason for all the characters