Rear Window《后窗》

The hero of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is trapped in a wheelchair， and we’re trapped， too—trapped inside his point of view， inside his lack of freedom and his limited options. When he passes his long days and nights by shamelessly maintaining a secret watch on his neighbors， we share his obsession. It’s wrong， we know， to spy on others， but after all， aren’t we always voyeurs when we go to the movies？ Here’s a film about a man who does on the screen what we do in the audience—look through a lens at the private lives of strangers.

阿尔弗雷德·希区柯克的电影《后窗》的主人公身陷轮椅，而我们作为观众也被困住——陷于他的主观视角，陷于他的缺乏自由，也陷于他有限的选择。当他厚颜无耻地坚持窥视邻居以消磨漫漫日夜时，我们对他的执迷感同身受。偷窥他人不对，我们知道，但是说到底，看电影时的我们难道不也正是偷窥狂吗？这部电影讲述的主人公呈现在银幕上的所作所为，和我们观众的作为并无二致——都是通过镜头观看陌生人的私生活。

The man is a famous photographer named L.B. Jeffries—“Jeff” to his fiancée. He’s played by James Stewart as a man of action who has been laid up with a broken leg and a heavy cast that runs all the way up to his hip. He never leaves his apartment and has only two regular visitors. One is his visiting nurse Stella （Thelma Ritter）， who predicts trouble （“the New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom1 is six months in the workhouse”）. The other is his fiancée， Lisa Fremont （Grace Kelly）， an elegant model and dress designer， who despairs of ever getting him to commit himself. He would rather look at the lives of others than live inside his own skin， and Stella lectures him， “What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.”

这个男人名叫L. B.杰弗里斯，是一个著名摄影师，未婚妻叫他杰夫。该角色由詹姆斯·斯图尔特扮演。杰夫原本富有活力，如今却因为一条腿骨折而不得不在家休养，沉重的石膏一直打到他的大腿根。他从不离开公寓，只有两个常来的访客。一个是他的上门护士斯特拉（特尔玛·里特饰），她预言会有麻烦（“纽约州对偷窥者的判决是6个月劳动改造。”）。另一个是他的未婚妻莉萨·弗里蒙特（格雷丝·凯莉饰），是个举止优雅的模特和服装设计师，她对最终得到杰夫的婚姻承诺感到无望。杰夫宁可关注他人，而不专注自己的生活。斯特拉告诫他说：“人应该走出自己的房子，关照内心，寻求改变。”

Jeff’s apartment window shares a courtyard with many other windows （all built on a single set by Hitchcock）， and as the days pass he becomes familiar with some of the other tenants. There is Miss Lonelyhearts， who throws dinner parties for imaginary gentleman callers; and Miss Torso， who throws drinks parties for several guys at a time; and a couple who lower their beloved little dog in a basket to the garden， and a composer who fears his career is going nowhere. And there is Thorvald （Raymond Burr）， a man with a wife who spends all her days in bed and makes life miserable for him. One day the wife is no longer to be seen， and by piecing together several clues （a saw， a suitcase， a newly dug spot in Thorvald’s courtyard garden）， Jeff begins to suspect that a murder has taken place.

杰夫公寓的窗户和许多别家的窗户共享一个庭院（希区柯克把它们都放在一个单一布景里），随着时间流逝，他也开始熟悉一些别的租户。这位是“寂寞芳心”小姐，为她想象中的来访绅士举办晚餐聚会；那位是“窈窕身段”小姐，一次邀来数位男士举办饮酒聚会；有一对夫妻，总是用一个小筐把他们心爱的小狗缒放到花园里；有个作曲家，在担心他的职业生涯走向穷途末路；还有一个叫托瓦尔（雷蒙德·伯尔饰）的人，他老婆整天窝在床上，让他的生活非常悲催。有一天，这个妻子再也见不到了，杰夫通过拼凑几条线索（一把锯子、一个行李箱、托瓦尔庭院花园里一处新近被挖掘过的地点），开始怀疑有谋杀案发生。

The way he determines this illustrates the method of the movie. Rarely has any film so boldly presented its methods in plain view. Jeff sits in his wheelchair， holding a camera with a telephoto lens， and looks first here and then there， like a movie camera would. What he sees， we see. What conclusions he draws， we draw—all without words， because the pictures add up to a montage of suspicion.

他确定结论的方式展示的正是这部电影的拍摄方式。很少有电影这样大胆又毫无保留地呈现电影的叙事手段。杰夫坐在他的轮椅里，手持带长距镜头的照相机，这儿看看那儿看看，就像电影摄影机做的那样。他看到什么，我们就看到什么。他下什么结论，我们也下什么结论——一切无需语言，因为这些图像叠加就构建出蒙太奇式的怀疑。

I sometimes fancy that various archetypal situations circled tirelessly in Hitchcock’s mind， like whales in a tank at the zoo. One of them was fascination of voyeurism—of watching people who do not know they are being watched. Another， famously， was the notion of an innocent man wrongly accused. And many of his films illustrate male impotence or indifference in the face of cool blond beauty. Much is said of Hitchcock’s blonds （Kim Novak， Eva Marie Saint， Grace Kelly， Tippi Hedren）， but observe that they are not erotic playmates so much as puzzles or threats. Lisa， the Kelly character， has a hopeless love for Jeff， who keeps her at arm’s length with descriptions of his lifestyle; a fashion model wouldn’t hold up in the desert or jungle， he tells her.

我有时幻想，各种原型场景在希区柯克头脑中盘桓，就像动物园水箱里的鲸鱼。其中之一就是对偷窥癖好的痴迷——观察那些不知道自己正被观察的人。另外一种，众所周知，就是无辜男人被错误指控。他的很多部电影都表现了男性面对冷艳金发女郎时的无能为力或无动于衷。关于希区柯克的金发女郎们（金·诺瓦克、爱娃·玛丽·森特、格雷斯·凯利、蒂比·海德莉）的讨论多不胜数，但是请注意，与其说她们是情色的玩伴，不如说是谜团或威胁本身。凯莉所扮演的莉萨对杰夫抱有无望的爱，而根据电影对杰夫的生活方式的表现，杰夫对她始终保持距离。他对她说：“时装模特在沙漠或者丛林里可撑不下去。”

But perhaps his real reason for keeping her away is fear of impotence， symbolized by the leg cast， and we are reminded of the strikingly similar relationship between Scotty， the Stewart character in Vertigo， and the fashion illustrator played by Barbara Bel Geddes. She， too， loves him. He keeps his distance. She sympathizes with his vertigo， as Kelly nurses the broken leg. Both observe his voyeuristic obsessions. In Vertigo， Scotty falls in love with a woman he has spied upon but never spoken to. In Rear Window， he is in love with the occupation of photography， and becomes completely absorbed in reconstructing the images he has seen through his lens. He wants what he can spy at a distance， not what he can hold in his arms.