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An essay comparing and contrasting the films Cleo de 5 à 7 (Verda) and Rear Window (Hitchcock). Score: 89/100....

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Jirachaiskul 1 James Jirachaiskul Professor Okpako CDM001 1 June 2021 Term Paper - Final Draft Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) depicts his take on community and companionship in life through the lens of how people are perceived from afar. His film depicts the main character, Jefferies, and his struggle to understand relationships in the context of his own life and how he perceives the world, particularly with his socialite girlfriend, Lisa. The other film discussing the same themes is Agnès Verda’s Cléo de 5 à 7, a French new-wave film (1962) portraying the famous singer Cléo Victoire and her struggle to remain strong whilst waiting for a dooming diagnosis, all the while trying to appear just as joyful and carefree as a beautiful, feminine woman. Both films tackle the subject of how public perception interweaves itself into the very consciousness of people’s psyches. However, where the films differ is in that Rear Window portrays the use of perception as an act of good—it serves the community and the individual; Cléo de 5 à 7, however, argues about the dangers and crippling cages that public perception places on individuals. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Agnès Verda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 both touch upon the topic of public perception and regarding others in different ways that present differing viewpoints on how people should look at others, and how it may serve or break the individual; the contrasting use of the male gaze, use of close-up or wide shots to present emotions from a character, and mise-en-scéne pieces such as costume design are all used in different ways in both films.

Jirachaiskul 2 The idea of the male gaze was first specifically coined by film theorist Laura Mulvey in the 1970’s, regarding the common practice in film and other media to have long shots of conventionally attractive women, as a source of ‘eye candy’ for hetero-male audiences. Both films employ this tactic, albeit for very different reasons and contexts. Early on in his film, Hitchcock establishes three staple female characters, although only one of which is considered a ‘main’ character, a protagonist—these being Jefferies’s nurse Stella, his dancer neighbor whom he nicknames ‘Miss Torso,’ and his love interest Lisa Freemont. Stella is introduced in the movie fairly plainly; she simply walks onto the scene with little introduction or special techniques that highlights her in a significant way. Miss Torso, on the other hand, has many long shots of her dancing or exercising in little clothing in her apartment on the opposite side of Jefferies’ apartment; various shots in the film, such as the one where both he and Stella are watching her through the window, allows Miss Torso to be the center, but not primary, focus, creating the allure of sexual appeal from afar, often intersplicing shots of Jefferies’ face in a close-up shot between long scenes of her in her apartment. Initially, these two characters don’t stand out in terms of importance to the film’s story, only appearing as simple background characters for Jefferies to sparsely interact with or look at. Ergo, it is the character Lisa Freemont who takes an important role in the film, and the filming techniques utilized in her introductory scene develops this strongly. Her first appearance has her in an extremely close-up shot of her face and Jefferies, cutting off the rest of her body from the shot. Then, she slowly and methodically walks around the room to turn on the lamps inside the apartment, and as she does the camera makes slow sweeps to reveal more and more of her full body, clothed in a beautiful and expensive-looking dress. What this does is establish her as the romantic and sexual object of the film, grabbing all

Jirachaiskul 3 the attention of the audience. Why this is important is that the film intentionally establishes her as both important and attractive, equating one and the same with this one scene. It subtly suggests that as a female main character, Lisa has to be alluring and present. Stella was given no such treatment whatsoever, and Miss Torso had little presence or significance, other than being eye candy Jefferies and the audience from time-to-time. Contrast this to Verda’s Cléo, where an extremely different tone and use of the male gaze can be observed. The first instance of the gaze can be seen in the very beginning of the film, where Cléo, after giving herself a pep-talk in the mirror about her beauty equating health, is walking down the street to a nearby café. The scene of her in the mirror is an extreme close-up, particularly of her face’s reflection, rather than her own face. After giving herself the pep-talk, the camera cuts to a long shot at a very high elevation, looking down on Cléo. As she walks, the camera does a pan, keeping closely concentrated on her face and body. Throughout this walk scene, the sounds of her footsteps are accentuated, creating a sense similar to that of a plaything, a toy played by a child, from above. This scene does what can be considered typical for a male gaze scene: long shots of a conventionally attractive woman, focusing primarily on her face and upper body. However, the fact that the camera is elevated to an extreme degree creates a sense of uneasiness or light frightfulness. It creates the feeling that Cléo herself knows she is being watched from somewhere afar, but makes no attempt to combat this. Her footfalls add to this as well, the relative loudness of them accentuates the feeling of vulnerability in the scene. The gaze is also touched upon later in the film, where Clèo is walking around without her wig. Contrasting to every other part of the film, the scene is shot in first person perspective, by use of a camera held by someone walking down the street. As a result, the random people ‘she’ walks by are all

Jirachaiskul 4 looking directly at her, and therefore, at the camera, meaning the audience themselves. At this point, it is well known that she is quite beautiful, but the use of first person perspective opens up the door to all audience members the vulnerability and self-consciousness she herself is feeling, being subjected to the male gaze. This directly correlates and impacts Cléo, as she is extremely cognizant of that fact. Whereas one film chooses to depict a female character’s charm and attractiveness as a cornerstone of her significance to the story, another film chooses to instead show the unsettling nature of the male gaze in its use of how their respective characters appear. In addition to the male gaze specifically, the films both used consistent skill in certain framing shots and techniques—specifically, the use of wide shots and close-up shots in order to further develop the characters and the attitude of looking of each respective film, but differed in presentation. As mentioned previously, one of the opening shots of Cléo had the titular character giving herself a small pep-talk in the mirror. This scene was done in an extreme close-up shot to establish the primary conflict of the movie—how Cléo’s beauty, while initially said to be signifier of health, was later shown to be a rigid cage in which she herself felt an exorbitant amount of pressure. This is further established in the café scene; mirrors are a motif in the film, and in this scene it physically presented Cléo’s face in-between two mirrors, echoing the conflict the first mirror scene had set up. Both times, an extreme close-up was done on her face, representing the inner conflict she is facing. Compare those scenes to the following from Rear Window. Whereas Varda used the close-up shots to convey the inner conflict Cléo was confronting as it relates to beauty and health interlinking, Hitchcock used the same techniques for an extremely different effect. Throughout the film, Jefferies made constant use of his camera to spy on his neighbor Mr. Thorwald, whom he suspected of having killed his wife, Mrs.

Jirachaiskul 5 Thorwald. By using shots of Jefferies’ reactions interspersed with him looking through his camera at Mr. Thorwald’s suspicious behavior, Hitchcock effectively validates his intrusion on Mr. Throwald’s privacy, simply due to the fact that Mr. Thorwald had indeed committed his wife’s murder. The close-up shots of Jefferies’ face each time did its part in convincing the audience that he is doing the right thing, this collecting of information despite being told not to by his detective friend. Relating back to Cléo, this notion of perceiving others in this manner is discouraged, directly taking the person, in this case Cléo herself, and the discomfort and intrusiveness slicing into her. Taking this into account, how the filmmakers present tonality through the use of varying camera shots and techniques go a long way in presenting their movies’ respective aim. Ultimately, Jefferies’ actions are seen as ‘justified’ or even just ‘good’ whereas Cléo is shown to be in inner turmoil, both using the same techniques. Another similarity relating to filming techniques between the two films can be seen in set design, character design, objects—or mise-en-scène—in presenting how characters perceive not only themselves, but the world around them. The first glimpse in Cléo’s room tells a lot about her character. Earlier in the film she made a bit of a fuss in selecting a fashionable hat she’d like to have, playing into the stereotype of being an extravagant, big-spending celebrity. At her home, however, her room is revealed to not only be large and mostly empty, but fairly minimalist in style. While in one shot she does indeed show a fairly large collection of jewelry and accessories, it is an extremely small part of the room that Cléo walks to in order to retrieve them. This specific style of dressing her apartment, supported by her singing «Sans toi» in the same room, was meant to surprise the audience—this subversion of expectations is intended to illustrate the disparity in what is known about Cléo and about her true self hidden away behind the celebrity

Jirachaiskul 6 facade—Florence Victoire—meaning the traditionally femininie archetype others perceive her to be is a falsehood fabricated by everyone but her. Her public perception is structured around herself, discouraging her to be open, as a direct consequence of how others look at her. Jefferies’ apartment, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of Cléo’s. The set is stocked full of articles and photographs and wares that flesh out Jefferies’ role in life. There is a photograph of a race car crash, with a tire flying towards the camera, all the while the camera shooting the film is revolving around the room, and after the car crash photo is shown, Jefferies himself is introduced, in a cast, allowing the audience to come up with the cause of his injury. There is also an inverted-colors photo of Lisa, creating an air of mystery around her and her role in Jefferies’ life. Everything from those photographs to Jefferies’ costume, simple, loose pajamas and a leg in a cast told much about him Hitchcock felt necessary for them to know before moving with the story. The value of mise-en-scène in cinematography is crucial, as not only can it tell basic information about a character, like Hitchcock did in fleshing out Jefferies before he even said anything, to conveying the underlying circumstances in which a character finds themselves in, like Varda does with Cléo and her sparse room. As said above, the various means of cinematography such as techniques in camera or set design can create two vastly different tones and meanings based on the filmmaker’s vision. Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 focuses on real-world implications of how the male gaze and conventional femininity boxes in a person, whereas Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window uses those same values through the lens of public perception (or as some critics say, voyeurism) to direct an incredibly suspenseful thriller in an almost-fantastical manner. These two films tackle the topic of perception in very different ways. How the filmmakers’ vision adapts to the different

Jirachaiskul 7 techniques employed, including the male gaze to accentuate a character’s importance or pressures a character may feel, close-up shots that invoke dread or suspense, and mise-en-scène in order to tell the audience about a character using only visuals, all direct an audience a story to follow that can change or recontextualize their own actions, ideas, and world.

Jirachaiskul 8 Bibliography Cléo de 5 à 7. Directed by Agnès Varda, performance by Corinne Marchand, Georges de Beauregard and Carlo Ponti, 1962. Cowie, Elizabeth. “On Rear Window.” Review of Rear Window, by Alfred Hitchcock. Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, 2005. Neroni, Hilary. “Feminist Film Theory and Cléo from 5 to 7.” Film Theory in Practice, edited by Todd McGowan, Bloomsbury, 28 Jan 2016, pp. 96-151. Rear Window. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, performances by James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr, Patron Inc. and Paramount Pictures, 1954....