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Rear Window: the courtyard, 1
Following the curtain-raising credits, the camera moves out of Jeff's window and makes two circuits of the courtyard, both ending with Jeff's sleeping head. The first circuit establishes the space: |
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| The second circuit of the courtyard focuses in on several apartments whose inhabitants provide secondary stories within the movie: the songwriter, the couple with the dog, and Miss Torso. |
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| Here for the tour of Jeff's apartment. |
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| Other sights and characters are introduced within the next few minutes, with the point of view established as Jeff's: The bathing beauties. Stella later comments that spying on them hasn't raised Jeff's temperature at all: |
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| The Thorwalds, in their apartment whose two windows (besides dividing the couple) have the proportions of movie and television screens: |
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| Jeff's view of the Thorwalds counterpoints his telephone conversation with his editor: "If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something drastic. Like what? I'm gonna get married, then I'll never be able to go anywhere. . . . Yeah, can't you just see me, rushing home to a hot apartment, to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal, and the nagging wife. . . . In my neighborhood they still nag." | |||||||||||||||
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| The next view of Thorwald, telling the busybody sculptress to shut up, emphasizes the lack of neighborliness in the courtyard, both spatial and thematic.
Inhabitants of two more apartments are subsequently introduced, with stories that relate more closely to Jeff's and Lisa's: the newlyweds and Miss Lonelyhearts: |
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