Before watching Rear Window, I went in expecting to really enjoy it because I liked the short story it is based on, It Had to be Murder by Cornell Woolrich. While I did like the film in general, there was something about it that made me hesitant to be really excited about what I had just seen; something that had made me a bit uncomfortable throughout the film. This something was the view and portrayal of women throughout the movie.
When the film opens, we are treated to the view that Jeff has out of his back window. We see a variety of men and women that reappear in the next scene, where Jeff is on the phone, looking out his window. While there are a few men focused on, those we see are engaged in doing things, such as composing music or arriving home from work. The majority of Jeff's time is spent looking at women, who appear to be doing idle or silly things. For example, Jeff watches a couple of sunbathers on top of a roof, who appear to take their clothing off, though he can't see them. Another example that stands out to me is the dancing woman across from him. The first time she appears, her top falls off, and the next time we see her, Jeff watches her dance around in next to nothing, even bending over for a few seconds. She continues to appear in the film as an "object" of study for not only Jeff, but also for Doyle and even Lisa and Stella, though they seem to study her in a different way than the men do most of the time.
Another woman looked at in this way throughout the film is Lisa, Jeff's love interest. The first time we see her is a close-up shot of her face. She is done up to look perfectly gorgeous, and she looks almost like a dream, which is magnified by Jeff waking up to her face. It almost seems as though she represents what the ideal image of a woman should look like. Lisa is clearly very beautiful, but Jeff thinks she is too perfect. He is resistant to marrying her because he doesn't think she can handle what his job requires, no matter what she says about it. He only really begins to "see" her once she gets involved in his investigation, and he begins to actually care about her once she steps out of his apartment and into the world he looks at out his window.
Our first image of Lisa
The issue here is between those who get to look vs. those who are looked at. The camera eye of this movie, along with many Hollywood films still today, is male, meaning the female characters are gazed at by the camera. This can also be called the male gaze, where the man looks and holds the power, and the woman is looked at because she is just an object to be seen. The examples I gave are only a few of the many I noticed as I was watching.
The problem that arises from this view of "looker" and "looked at" is that the woman being looked at is seen as lesser, as she is reduced to an object. The most powerful example I saw of this was when Lisa told Doyle of her ideas about the missing wife's purse and jewelry. Not only did Doyle not believe her, he outright dismissed her on the basis that because she is a woman, any ideas she has are only "feminine intuition," which is only a fairy tale. He doesn't want to listen to her, but he had no problem looking at her when she first came into the room.
Lisa vs. Doyle
I could go on and on about this topic. There were many examples throughout the movie, and I didn't even touch on the film's treatment of marriage, especially the view of women in marriage. The important thing is to not let the negative words, actions, and even beliefs that permeate a film adversely affect our behavior, but instead to have open discussions about why we have to be different.
As an English major and avid reader for most of my life, I have long been guilty of condemning otherwise decent films for not being entirely "faithful" to the novels that came before them. I wanted these films to adhere 100% to the novels they were made from because I had read them and fallen in love. Very recently, I've learned how much more I would have enjoyed these movies if I had kept an open mind and let the movie tell the story in its own unique way. It was especially through looking at and discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby and watching the 1974 and 2013 film versions of this novel that I could see the merits of a more loosely adapted film.
Though there are many critics of Baz Luhrmann's 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, I absolutely love it. Not only is it a fun movie to watch, but I believe it does a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of Fitzgerald's novel. In order to feel the excitement and properly enjoy a movie like this, you really have to suspend all judgement and comparisons to the novel at first. There are many things about the 2013 movie that are unexpected and unorthodox, which leaves you wondering what decade you are actually watching. A prime example of this is the music throughout the movie. A whole argument could be made surrounding the music in this film, but all I will say is that I think it is a clever device that helps make the story accessible to a modern audience, as well as making a fantastic soundtrack. Suspending quick judgments is important in order to see how faithful the movie truly is. Faithful to what, you might say? The movie does change much of the narration of Nick Carraway, and everything does look and feel more modern, but is any of that really as important as we make it out to be?
I would argue that the 2013 film has the most important element of fidelity, which lets me ignore its imperfections and enjoy it wholeheartedly. This movie has what Andre Bazin calls "equivalence of meaning" with the novel. I think the 2013 Gatsby captures something the 1974 version completely misses, which is the heart and spirit of the novel. In the 1974 version, we don't understand Gatsby or his undying hope, we don't feel the carelessness of the Buchanans or the time, and we don't feel the shock or trauma of Myrtle's death. The 2013 version communicates all of these things in a very poignant way. Using some dialogue directly from the novel and some new, scenes are created that give us the world Fitzgerald was trying to critique, and we see why. The movie looks like a big party gone wrong, using fewer words than the novel but communicating the same message, which is the most important thing for a film to do. By the end of the film, we understand why Nick says to Gatsby, "You're worth the whole damn bunch." This is crucial to the novel, and thus, to the film.
A short example of the faithfulness of the 2013 film is the Valley of Ashes scene. The 2013 version uses only three phrases directly from the novel, yet through images, scenery, camera angles, and dialogue it shows in roughly 45 seconds what the novel takes two and a half pages to tell. The 1974 film hardly gives any information about this part of the novel, and it is severely lacking. So, questions of fidelity are not as simple as they seem. An edgy film that on the surface seems out in left field may, in fact, be more true to the novel than it appears. If it has "equivalence of meaning" and captures the purpose behind the novel, than I believe the film is successful in being faithful.
