“I look up, I look down”: Vision and Seeing in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Rear Window, and Stranger on a Train

Initial Insights

Hitchcock’s manipulation of suspense, cameo appearances, and pure cinema ideology have become famous elements of his films. These three generalizations of Hitchcock’s films have become identification markers that allow anyone to recognize one of his films without even viewing the credits. However, Hitchcock was not born a master manipulator of suspense and many aspects of his films attribute the heart pounding and blood rising that viewers of his films experience. Hitchcock’s lighting and mise-en-scène have often been argued as some of the main sources of suspense, but there is more than what meets the eye. Hitchcock has a tendency in his films to allow access to his audience to the direct visuals that the main characters of his films see. In other words, the audience sees through the eyes of Hitchcock’s characters allowing the audience to step themselves into Hitchcock’s films. The limited or sometimes expansive knowledge of these characters through the character’s vision or eyesight becomes the only access of knowledge to the audience. From this limited point of view, Hitchcock effectively creates suspense in his films. Hitchcock’s manipulation of vision as a technique in his films developed overtime. Stranger on a Train (1951) shows Hitchcock playing around with vision, but over time with the making of Rear Window (1954) and finally Vertigo (1958), Hitchcock emphasizes vision even more to create different varieties of suspense.

Boarding Stranger on a Train

Stranger on a Train offers an excellent basis for Rear Window and Vertigo in how vision can be used to emphasize suspense. Stranger on a Train is less focused than its successors because the film bounces back and forth between two characters’, Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and Bruno Antony’s (Robert Walker) stories and points-of-view, but Rear Window and Vertigo focus around mostly one character. The audience is given better access to Antony’s internal mental processes through the shots we get of his vision, even though Haines remains the main subject of the film. Furthermore, Antony provides the audience with a great deal of background information and consistently discusses his reading, making Antony a character the audience has to rely on for information. In Antony’s introduction on the train, he tells Haines that he has read a great deal about Haines in newspapers and magazines and knows nearly everything about Haines’ life. Already the film has a sense of tension and suspense as Antony clearly could have an unhealthy obsession with Haines. The following scenes when Haines gets off the train only result in proving all of the information that Antony explained on the train, marking him as a true source of reliable information. There is already an inclination on the train that Antony has an almost stalker quality about him, which is only intensified by his hunt of Haines’ wife Miriam (Kasey Rogers). Antony is able to successfully peak Miriam’s interest and convince her to let her guard down simply by staring at her. Throughout the whole hunt of Miriam, we see her through Antony’s eyes, however when he murders her, the audience is denied access to his vision of the murder. Instead, the audience watches the murder through the reflection of Miriam’s glasses on the ground. The reflection in the glasses adds to the suspense of the film since glasses are a tool for seeing and a visual border that can alter sight. Suspense is created by the audience’s lack of Antony’s direct sight during the murder and the fact that the view of the murder is not a view possible by any spectator or witness in the film. This leaves the audience to remain tense as it is shown that no one will be able to stop the murder or murderer. Not to mention, Antony takes the glasses with him as if to permanently cement that memory of murder with him. Interestingly, throughout the film the audience is given Antony’s view of the murder after he meets Barbara (Pat Hitchcock). Upon seeing Barbara for the first time, Antony sees the lighter flame reflection in Barbara’s glasses that he would have seen in Miriam’s eyes just before he killed her. Antony consistently stares at Barbara and through her relives the murder, which adds extra suspense in the film as it becomes clear that Antony might desire to murder again. The audience has access to Miriam’s murder again when Antony shows off his choking abilities on an older woman and sees Barbara, causing him to nearly murder the woman. Again, this scene reveals Antony’s desire of murder. If Antony was sitting in extreme guilt about the murder, he would not still try to talk about murder with anyone in casual conversation or show how he completed the murder. Even other than the murder and memories of the murder, Antony’s gaze affects the suspense of the movie in other ways. Antony is consistently stalking and staring at Haines under his expectation that Haines will murder his father. Antony is always sneaking around in the background and gives the audience the feeling that Antony is always watching and could even be watching them. The fear of being watched causes great anxiety in the film as Haines and Barbara fear they will both be murdered. The anxiety of being watched is a common human fear that Hitchcock clearly uses to his advantage in the making of this film.

Stream Stranger on a Train on Prime Video here.

A Peak at Rear Window

Rear Window takes the elements of vision used in Stranger on a Train and completely isolates and exaggerates them. Rear Window gives the audience only one character, L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), to view the entire film through. Even though the audience views the whole film through the eyes of Jefferies, his eyesight is always through some sort of lens or filter. Jefferies is always looking through a window and sometimes through binoculars or a camera lens. The tools that Jefferies uses never allow him to see the complete reality of what is going on in his neighbors’ lives: he can only see parts of it. If the neighbors have the shades drawn or the lights off than Jefferies loses access to the lives of his neighbors. Furthermore, when Jefferies uses the binoculars and camera, he is focusing his line of vision and avoiding the world beyond the circle of sight. The limited vision of Jefferies creates anxiety as the story lines of the other neighbor’s progress. It becomes impossible to pay attention to all of them at once, creating a feeling of having no control over the world and creating suspense. The tools used to both give access and enhance Jefferies’ eyesight give a similar function to the glasses in Stranger on a Train. The tools allow for the exposure of the truth. As it seems, nothing can be unseen in a Hitchcock film. Antony’s psychotic mania is relived and expressed directly through his eyesight and Jefferies exposes his neighbor’s through his. An even more important quality to Rear Window is that the audience is directly made to feel as though they are viewing the same world as Jefferies and even living in the same world. Besides the point that Jefferies is the only character’s mind and view the audience has access to, there are many shots in the film that appear as if Jefferies is watching out of his window, but the camera turns around to face a sleeping or distracted Jefferies. This technique of giving the audience their own sight furthers the suspense in the film as the audience then is aware of things that Jefferies himself is not aware of. Throughout the film there is a notion that Jefferies could perhaps be the same obsessive stalker that is seen in Stranger on a Train, however his suspicions turn out to be true. In the case of the movie, this thought creates even more anxiety because the film reveals that sometimes the wild conclusions that our brains can come to could very well be true.

Stream Rear Window on YouTube here.

Stumbling through Vertigo

Rear Window focuses on the truths that vision and suspicion can produce, however Vertigo uses vision for quite the opposite. Vertigo, similarly, to Rear Window is spent most of the time in the eyes of one character, John Ferguson (James Stewart). However, Ferguson’s sight and suspicions do not lead to truth in the same way that is obvious in Stranger on a Train and Rear Window. Ferguson throughout the film stalks Madeleine Elster /Judy Barton (Kim Novak) and eventually falling in love with the vision and façade that Madeleine embodies. Again, stalking becomes synonymous with staring in this Hitchcock film. Ferguson’s stalking exaggerates the vision in the film since Ferguson can only make all of his assumptions based off of what he sees. Unlike Rear Window, Ferguson’s eyes deceive him and deceive the audience. This creates a different type of suspense because the romantic and fantastic reality that he wants so badly is all made up Ferguson is constantly shown a false reality throughout the film, and when confronted with the truth he denies everything and forces himself back into delusion. After discovering Judy Barton and unable to realize that she acted as Madeleine, Ferguson drives himself mad forcing Judy to dress, act, and look exactly like Madeline. When Judy reveals herself looking exactly like Madeline, she appears in a cloud of fog, suggesting that what is being seen is not real. Ferguson’s eyesight remains clouded by dreams and denial. Suspense emerges beneath Ferguson’s denial because the audience wants so badly for him to realize the truth and also becomes worried of what might come to fruition through his delusion. Hitchcock emphasizes that looks are deceiving and not to be trusted throughout the narrative of Madeline and Judy. Judy wants to desperately for Ferguson to love her, but he is only in love with her image and nothing more. Even after Madeleine’s death he remembers her only for what she wore and what her car looked like, he never mentions her personality. Furthermore, it is emphasized in the film that Ferguson suffers from vertigo which literally affect his eyesight. Ferguson’s vertigo plays a big role in the film in this way because his vertigo becomes an excuse to not have to see the harsh realities in his life. Madeleine dies because of Ferguson’s vertigo (at least in his eyes), however since Ferguson did not see the death, he easily denies it. On the flip side, when Ferguson overcomes his vertigo, he finds that his vision has always been impaired by the lies and false reality surrounding him. This time his failure to see leads to the death of Judy Barton. Ferguson is left at the end of the film still unable to come to terms with reality. Both versions of the aesthetic ideal Ferguson created by obsessing over one person end up destroyed. It would not be hard to imagine Ferguson denying his life even further by committing suicide after Judy Barton falls. Hitchcock’s Vertigo explores the delusion and deception around sight and creates a world where nothing can be trusted, creating the highest level of anxiety.

Stream Vertigo on YouTube here.

Final Examination

Stalking, murder, and psychosis all lay in the eye of the beholder in Hitchcock’s films. Sight is proven to be a delicate sense in Hitchcock’s film because it can be misconstrued through different lenses and it is interpreted and edited by the character seeing. Hitchcock plays with the insecurity that comes in relying on vision in Stranger on a Train, Rear Window, and Vertigo as a source of suspense. Furthermore, Hitchcock uses something that nearly every human being uses to survive, live, and think and manipulates it into something that can create and deny fears and even reveal daily horrors and anxieties. While other filmmakers create suspense and horror through inhumanity and unhuman species, Hitchcock instead feeds on human anatomy itself, the stuff of flesh. The reliance on human experience is the underlying factor in Hitchcock’s films. Hitchcock allows the audience to place themselves in his films, to see what the characters see, filling every brain with the utmost anxiety about being an accessory to murder.