Fire and Ice in Hitchcock’s Rear Window

In one of Sir Alfred’s most stylish thrillers, L.B. Jeffries, an immobilized photographer-turned-Peeping Tom, played by James Stewart, spies on his neighbors only to discover that the man-next-door may very well be a cold-blooded killah. Recouping from a broken leg incurred while covering an automobile race for an outdoor magazine, he enlivens his days of convalescence by becoming voyeur to the apartment building facing his rear window. When he draws his lady friend, Lisa, in on the thrill, together they brush shoulders with mayhem, mystery, and murder. The film focuses primarily on two parallel narratives: the implicit homicide playing across the courtyard and the love story acted out in the apartment. Metaphoric content accords Rear Window’s viewers provoking mind-candy if they examine the story on more figurative levels. Threaded throughout the film are contrasting motifs of hotness and frigidity that play a significant role in realizing and deciphering L.B. Jeffries’ complex psychological condition, hinging on the fringe of lunacy.

At the onset of the film before any dialogue is introduced, temperature drives to set the tone for events that will ensue. It is not even 8 A.M. and the barometer clocks in at 90-plus degrees. From a distance, a couple sleeping on the fire escape stirs. As the camera pans across the courtyard, viewers witness the building’s anonymous, heat-exhausted city dwellers resume consciousness. Tension mounts as the summer temperature peaks, evidenced by Jeffries’ frustration at not being able to relieve the itch menacing inside his sweltering cast. Staged in the early to mid-1950’s, the setting lacks air-conditioning units that would force residents to keep their windows closed—a detail so consequential that it is often overlooked. Hot and humid conditions contribute to the air being charged with sinister vibes. In terms of connotation, heat is closely allied to the idea of being stifled or smothered, a reality imposed upon Jeffries on account of his immobility, as well as Lisa’s insistence on marriage. As a desirable female, she is manifest fire that threatens to char his hitherto freewheeling lifestyle.

In stark, though indirect, contrast to this notion of physical heat, the community’s dynamics is marked by a general sense of coldness or callousness with respect to neighbor relations. Residing in apartments modeled after compartmentalized pigeon-holes, the men and women of this Greenwich Village locale live remote existences. Isolated from one another and alienated from themselves, they foster unfeeling attitudes and maintain reserved, uncommunicative, and mundane lives. For instance, while the hyperactive Miss Torso prances about in her studio, the spinster Miss Lonelyhearts wallows in desolation. The songwriter engages in counter-productive debauchery, while the self-involved newlyweds sequester themselves from mainstream society. In fact, indifference and insensitivity run so thickly in the heart of the Big Apple that one, if not more, of its citizens is capable of killing in cold-blood.

While the character of Jeffries refrains from murdering his kind in the conventional sense of the term, he manages to butcher his relationship with Lisa by championing a credo of callous self-interest. Evidently, the man has a remarkable aversion to intimacy. Figuratively, cold also connotes impotence, a condition temporarily troubling Jeffries. Emotionally cool towards her, Jeffries protests when Lisa, wearing an elegant, white nightgown, proposes to spend the night: "I just have one bed." He derives more pleasure in stealing glimpses of his big-city neighbors’ lives than in relating to his sophisticated and utterly devoted girlfriend:

Indeed, Jeffries remains cold towards her advances until the scene when she is actively in hot-pursuit of evidence incriminating Mr. Thorwald. Their relationship is ensnared in the same stasis that paralyzes all aspects of Jeffries’ existence. Furthermore, Jeffries’ inhumanity is revealed when Lisa remarks how he and his hesitant detective-friend are "ghouls" for being "plunged into despair [to] find a man didn’t kill his wife."

If there be truth in claiming that Jeffries sees multiple distorting-mirror reflections of his own doubts and frustrations in his neighbors’ situations, then perhaps the fateful incident that transpires in the Thorwald apartment is but the most extreme fulfillment of Jeff’s urge to be rid of Lisa. Having related that, it is fair to allege that in a Miltonian sense, Jeffries harbors a self-perpetuating hell within. His internal hell is inescapable. So very keen on sticking his nose in other people’s affairs, he cannot wrest himself away from the grips of voyeurism, an addiction that knows no antidote. To him, observation becomes obsession, and avocation becomes mania. An internal fire propagated by disturbance of intellect perverts his thinking, now overly stimulated. Sinking deeper into the trappings of moodiness, a worldly, choleric, impatient, and hot-tempered Jeffries seduces paranoia.