The Best Things Happen in the Dark

Lighting in Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954)

Abstract

This essay examines the use of lighting in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) to illustrate how the creation of suspense is done through carefully created shadows. The use of light and dark call attention to different aspects of Rear Window’s character psychology particularly with regard to their outlook on romantic relationships. This essay contends that Rear Window (1954) warrants classification as a horror film rather than its typical thriller label due to its depiction of material psychology that is filtered through Hitchcockian suspense. Through mise-en-scene analysis of a specific scene in the first half of the film, careful attention to the use of lighting and deliberately placed shadows reveals the horror concealed under the façade of domesticity and the mundane.