Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window is often discussed as a metaphor for film viewing: Jimmy Stewart's L.B. Jefferies amuses himself by observing his neighbors through their windows.  We, the audience, who sit down to watch this movie for our amusement, are doing the same thing - so the critics often say, at least.  

What, specifically, does the watching mean though?  The characters debate the ethics of watching, but ethics don't rule this movie.  The point isn't that any of the watching is good or bad; what comes of their watching is sometimes good and sometimes not.  The same amoralism that we see in Rope and North by Northwest is here.  Interest and excitement rule.  

Jeff lives in the bohemian Greenwich Village, surrounded by artists for neighbors.  They put themselves out, in some ways, to be seen.  Making compelling surfaces, negotiating what you find compelling with how others respond, is the objective for the characters here, rather than "goodness," or even some kind of existential satisfaction.

As the characters exchange arguments about ethics or romance, the world outside Jeff's apartment interferes, either through the characters' responses to it punctuating the conversation, or by some sound from outside the apartment getting inside.  On the other hand, when the camera's attention is on the neighbors, the question of what the others are doing remains open.  In some scenes, we're unsure which part of the neighborhood the characters are attending to.

The personal conflict between Jeff and his girlfriend Lisa is as prominent in the film as the possibility of murder in the neighborhood.  He denies the possibility of marrying her, expressing doubt that their relationship will work out in the long term, believing her lifestyle is too different from his own.  But over the course of their joint efforts to expose the crime, Lisa shifts Jeff's opinions in her favor by going over into the suspect's apartment herself to look for evidence.  Jeff spends the film watching, and so do we, but Lisa does something we can't: intervene in the scene she's watching.  

It becomes not just about watching, but about being watched, and the tension between wanting to stay watching and wanting to act.  The scene where Thorwald confronts Jeffries in his own apartment is a moment in which the screen actors stare back at the audience.