One of the reasons why I always loved Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” from 1954 and regard it as one of his finest works, is the use of camera placement in creating intimacy in the story.

We are in the same room as James Stewart’s character L. B. Jeffries (Jeff). We see what he sees. What is really interesting about this movie is how Hitchcock is pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling by placing the camera where he does.

He’s not breaking the “fourth wall” per se (more on that in a minute) but he’s placing us — as the audience — so close to the action that we cannot move or look away. It creates an extremely intimate and personal space, bordering on being outright uncomfortable.

What is the fourth wall and how is it sometimes broken?

Most people are by now aware of the notion of the fourth wall, the breaking of same. If not, here’s a super quick run-through.

In theater and movies, you refer to “breaking the fourth wall” when the actors on the stage/screen face the audience directly.

The three others walls are the back wall and the two sidewalls. The fourth wall consists — metaphorically speaking — of a giant one-way mirror that we as the audience are peering through. We are viewing the actors through this invisible wall that exists between us. Usually, it is considered bad form to break this invisible wall, as we the audience are meant as outside observers of the narrative being played out in front of us.

But sometimes a storyteller actively chooses the break this invisible wall — the fourth wall — and have the actors addressing the audience directly to make a specific dramatic point.

Sometimes this works really well and can be used as a tremendously powerful tool for the storyteller.

400 Fourth Wall Breaking Films Supercut (credit: https://vimeo.com/129072973)

Some examples of breaking the fourth wall that works really well include (and is by no means an exhaustive list): “Fight Club”, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Goodfellas” (the final scene — super powerful use from Scorsese). And of course Deadpool as a more recent example.

Or “The Last Action Hero”, an entire movie based on breaking the fourth wall in a very literal sense.

A room with a view

Back to “Rear Window”. Hitchcock’s movie clearly does not fall into the category of movies that break the fourth wall. At no time in the movie are the actors and actress speaking directly to the camera (even though they sometimes look directly into the camera, but I would argue that they are looking into Jeff’s camera)

But Hitchcock does something else that is really interning. Remember the fourth wall being a one-way mirror of sorts that we are looking through. We are observing the story from the outside.

What Hitchcock does in “Rear Window” is to move the camera inside the four walls. We are no longer merely observing the story from the outside, we are standing in the middle of the room together with Jeff.

He is bound to the wheelchair and therefore to the room because of his injuries. And we are bound to the room because of the closure of the four walls around us. At no point in the movie do we move away from where the camera is placed. This is clearly communicated to us in the final scene where Thorwald enters Jeff apartment and in the fight with him, Thorwald throws Jeff out the window. And we fall out the window with him.