In both of the examples so far, both film narrator and implied filmmaker remain elusive and anonymous even when the films themselves offer cues to these hypothetical presences. This is often the case in classic Hollywood cinema. Let us recall that discerning the work of an auteur director requires a comparative act of decipherment among several films of a "career author." Without such comparisons, it would be far more difficult to "discover" that being. It is unlikely that we could discover the "personality" of John Ford or define a "John Ford film" on the basis of only, say, Fort Apache. What, though, of an "empirical author" whose films not only show strong traces of narrational agency but also openly evoke an implied author through reference to the empirical author himself? I refer, of course, to Alfred Hitchcock.

It is hardly possible to talk about authorship, narration, and agency in film without reference to Hitchcock, who has been a central example in almost every discourse of film criticism in the last half-century. Part of Hitchcock’s importance is due to his popularity and part to his prolific output—over fifty films—but that accomplishment is not much greater than a number of his peers. More important are two factors: that Hitchcock restricted himself (or was restricted) primarily to one genre, the "thriller," and that he skillfully adapted different narrational modes within a dominant form, the classical Hollywood narrative. Thus, his debts to Soviet montage, especially Pudovkin’s films and writings, and to German expressionism are paid through stylistic tropes that enhance but do not overwhelm the classical Hollywood style. And, almost unique within his generation, Hitchcock managed to put forth his own extra-textual image as a personality and as the "Master of Suspense" long before the additional publicity he garnered through a television series and books and magazines issued under his name. In short, over a period of time, Hitchcock stood within and above a select group of directors (Lubitsch, Capra, DeMille, et al.) as an identifiable name and image and as the "implied author" of his films.

Hitchcock’s "signature," his sign of authorship, is most obviously manifested in the cameo appearances he made in most of his films. As Thomas Leitch puts it, " . . . the significance of Hitchcock’s cameos is that they make an image of the director available for recognition" (4). Thus, the audience is both served with a reminder of the putative agency of the film itself and engaged by the game of searching for the eventual appearance. Leitch claims that these cameos serve neither the story nor the discourse of Hitchcock’s films and thus cannot be accounted for by that narratological dualism: " . . . audiences who recognize Hitchcock at all are not really distracted, even pleasurably, from the story because their experience of the film as story and discourse is not nearly so sharply split; in watching a Hitchcock film, they do not shuttle neatly back and forth between two kinds of awareness" (6). Similarly, Leitch is not quite satisfied by David Bordwell’s model of film narration, which "would banish the storyteller" from a film (7). Leitch himself goes on to argue that Hitchcock’s films are best seen as "games," "as objects of pleasure rather than as objects of knowledge" (7).

Leitch’s concept is a suggestive one, though I do not have the space to elaborate on it further here, but it does point to the way in which a film or any art object can subsume both experiential and contextual awareness without creating a necessary and impossible dichotomy between two ways of "knowing" a text. Such "games," of course, are often played in literature, as in the examples I’ve cited from Twain, Nabokov, Fowles and Barth, or in the shaped poems of George Herbert or Appolinaire, or even in Shakespeare’s puns on the name "Will" in several of the sonnets. They are played in painting, as in Velazquez’s Las Meninas or Van Eyck’s Anolfi and His Bride. And they can even be played in music, as when Bach uses the older notation system (using "H" instead of "G") to "spell" out his name musically. However, I do not think that a game theory need invalidate or replace a narratological one. It is doubtful that game theory can provide the kind of breadth of explanation of narratological models, even if it serves as a very useful supplement in a number of cases. One such case, I would suggest, can be found in Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Is it possible to say anything new about this film, the supreme example of the film viewer as voyeur? Despite its lack of availability for some time after Hitchcock’s death, Rear Window has still been a center of controversy between those who simply see it as an extremely skillful and pleasurable entertainment and those who would probe it for psychoanalytic depths, with themes of voyeurism, impotence, desire and repression. Leitch’s approach would suggest that these two approaches are not incompatible, yet strangely Leitch himself does not pursue the game analogy in his own analysis of the film as "a comedy that makes the audience feel good by encouraging the audience to distrust the hero’s self-isolating impulses and then rescuing him from those impulses" (174). Such psychological analysis is not exactly wrong, but it does little to describe the operation of the film at play with its audience (and vice-versa). More to the point, I think, is the "game" of "who speaks?" that Rear Window plays.

The story of Rear Window probably does not need much elaboration. L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart), a photojournalist, has been immobilized in his Greenwich Village apartment with a broken leg caused by an accident. Sitting in his wheelchair, with his leg in a cast, he frets about his relationship with Lisa (Grace Kelly), a glamorous model whose lifestyle is at odds with his, and trades barbs with his down-to-earth physical therapist Stella (Thelma Ritter). With little else to do, Jeff gazes out of his rear window across a courtyard and into the windows and lives of various neighbors, speculating about what they are doing and why. Eventually, Jeff becomes convinced that one neighbor, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), has murdered his wife. With difficulty, Jeff convinces Lisa and Stella to share his opinion, although it is rejected by his friend Detective Doyle (Wendell Corey). When Lisa secures "proof" of Thorwald’s guilt, the killer attacks Jeff in his apartment but is stopped just in time. Jeff suffers another broken leg in the incident, but he and Lisa are apparently happily united at the end.

The situation in the film is a field-day for Freudians, and much of the commentary on the film has to do with issues of impotence, scopophilia, inversion, narcissism, and so on. In addition, the situation of looking at lives portrayed in rectangular frames in the comforting safety of isolation has an obvious corollary in the filmgoing experience itself, another major point for psychoanalytic criticism. Still, for all that commentary, including discussion of point-of-view shots and eyeline matches, there has been little attention to the means by which this story gets told. One exception is David Bordwell, who traces in some detail the ways in which the film cues the viewer’s activity, especially through patterns of knowledge presented and withheld, provoking the viewer’s own construction of the story/fabula (NITFF 40-57, and passim.) As if anticipating Leitch’s objections, Bordwell does note that some elements within a film may not be adequately contained by reference to narration, which, following Kristin Thompson, he dubs "excess": "precisely those elements that escape unifying impulses" (NITFF 53).

Hitchcock’s own cameo in Rear Window would seem to be one of those "excessive" moments. As John Belton remarks, Hitchcock "winks, as it were, at the audience . . . .he thus acknowledges that the film is a construction and that he has constructed it" (11, Belton’s emphasis) [13]. Even though the director appears in a particular location (the room of one of Jeff’s neighbors, a composer), his presence seems to have no meaningful function within the diegesis. Even as a sign of "authorship," Hitchcock on the screen is a presence excessive to the needs of the narrative itself and unmotivated by narration within the diegesis or outside of it (unlike literary narrator-characters like Nabokov in Bend Sinister). I would agree with many critics that in most of Hitchcock’s films, his presence is little more than the marker of a "game" played with the audience or "excess" within a self-contained narrative. As such, "Hitchcock" on the screen may not signify much more than an artist’s signature on a canvas, or the way that caricaturist Al Hirschfield always works his daughter Nina’s name into his drawings. In a few films, though, Hitchcock's presence does more than that. In Rear Window, the cameo appearance is a visual signifier of authorship that, paradoxically, points to the soundtrack as another source of narrational commentary, playing off of two visual modes of "narration" in the film.

It may be the fact that the film was withheld for so long, or it may be the utter abundance of commentary on the movie, but most criticism of Rear Window has overlooked the importance of the distinction between two visual modes of narration, not to mention their interaction with the soundtrack, that further interact thematically with two distinct interpretations of "rear window ethics." Many critics have paid a great deal of attention to one visual mode that is always filtered through the perceptions of Jeff (and occasionally other characters). Far fewer have given much, if any, attention to the other pattern: information given more or less directly by the apparent agency of a mobile camera.

The problem of narration in Rear Window hinges on how information is given to the audience. The information given through Jeff’s perceptions receives the most commentary. Donald Spoto, for example, accurately claims that Jeff’s neighbors represent for him "possibilities for the future." However, Spoto also claims that "with the exception of one slow pan across the apartments, we see them only as Jeffries sees them." Thus, according to Spoto, Jeff is "the prisoner of his own fantasy life" (241, Spoto’s emphasis). This description, though, is not accurate. There are several slow pans across the courtyard in the film, and each one returns to Jeff’s apartment, where he is not looking out the window at all. Even David Bordwell’s careful analysis of the film misses that point: "Rear Window . . . confines itself almost wholly to what Jeff knows (with a few significant exceptions)" (NITFF 57). John Belton recognizes the pattern but only in the shots at the beginning and end of the film that function as a framing device further reinforcing psychological interpretations: because the back of Jeff’s head "faces" his window in these shots, Belton remarks, "The implication is that what he sees through this window is an extension of his unconscious mind, of the back of his head" (16). It is true that there are only two times in which the camera takes up a position at a significant distance from Jeff’s apartment (after the discovery of a dog’s murder and at the end of Thorwald’s attack on Jeff). However, the several camera-pans (or near-pans) of the courtyard at various times in the film (not just the beginning and end) actually create a pattern of information-giving of which Jeff is unaware.

The emphasis on Jeff as focalizer in the narrative comes through the use of point-of-view shots and eyeline matches. Jeff looks out the widow and we then see what he apparently sees, either directly through his eyes (especially when he is using a camera lens or binoculars) or from a vantage point close to his own. Such scenes are often accompanied by speculations about the neighbors by Jeff or other characters. It is obvious that the protagonists project their own fears, fantasies and preconceptions on the neighbors that they watch. Thus, early in the film, Jeff sees marriage as exemplified by the bickering Thorwalds, whose union will soon end in murder. Talking with Lisa, he compares her glamorous lifestyle to that of the dancer across the way, "Miss Torso," whom he describes as leading men on for her own pleasure. Lisa, in turn, replies that Miss Torso is "doing a woman’s hardest job, fending off a lot of wolves" while she faithfully awaits the return of her real lover. Lisa finds her own analogy in "Miss Lonelyhearts," the unmarried woman whose few attempts at romance end badly. Jeff finds another counterpart in the frustration of the composer, who seems unable to finish a song he is working on. All the while, the possibility of wedded erotic bliss is indicated by newlyweds who only occasionally raise their shade for a bit of air, counterpoised by the older married couple who sleep end-to-end on the fire escape. Lisa and Stella both question the morality of such voyeurism at first, but they both succumb to it after a while. Detective Doyle, on the other hand, seems to bring a dose of reality to all this woolgathering by remarking that we can never really deduce what is going on in people’s minds and lives simply from what we see.

The point-of-view shots and eyeline match editing in these scenes are remarkable only by their volume. They are quite typical as standard components of classical continuity editing, working for the most part to reinforce the continuities of time, space and narrative within the film. Moreover, these devices tend to suppress awareness of a distinct agency outside of the characters or the film delivering this information to us. This mode of narration is a good example of what Seymour Chatman describes as the character as "perceptual filter," which "technically codes the viewer’s reconstruction of the story space" (CTT 158). As such, "seeing" through the characters’ eyes, we are encouraged to identify both with the characters’ physical perceptions and with their interpretations of what they see, their mental "point of view" or what Chatman refers to as "interest focus" (CTT 158). Those interpretations, though, are undercut in Rear Window by a three-fold strategy: 1) conflicting "interpretations" by other characters (as when Jeff and Lisa disagree about Miss Torso’s love life or when Doyle argues with Jeff); 2) reverse shots that return to the character looking, especially Jeff (as when he reacts with apparent shame at spying on the newlyweds or when witnessing Miss Lonelyhearts’ bereavement); and, most important for my purposes, 3) information given by the alternative narration of panning shots, which for convenience I will simply label "the camera-narrator."

The conflicting interpretations offered through conversation by the characters are all firmly intradiegetic, confined to the story-world. The second source of conflict, the reverse shot, which could threaten the spatial or narrative continuity of the film, is subsumed within the practices and conventions of continuity editing (following the 180-degree rule, for example [14]). Viewers are more likely to concentrate on Jeff’s shamed reaction than the switch in camera position. The third source, however—signified by the panning camera-narrator—does not really violate continuity editing but does set up a way of knowing that is potentially, and sometimes actually, at odds with what the characters perceive and how they interpret that. The panning movement is an example, according to Chatman, of how the "cinematic narrator" can "explicitly describe, independently of any character’s filter (‘point of view’)" (CTT 45). For example, following the opening credit sequence (in which window blinds are raised by an unseen agent [15]), the camera passes out of the apartment window, apparently following a cat. The cat, though is really a herring—a red one, and the camera continues to pan the courtyard, giving us our first view of the layout of the area and a few of the neighbors going about their business. This movement begins as a typical use of camera motion—following the action of some character or object in the mise-en-scene; however, by breaking away from the cat, the camera establishes its independence from the objects in the setting and "announces" its narrational function. This movement concludes as the camera returns to show us Jeff in his wheelchair, asleep and turned away from the window.

This long movement is followed almost immediately by another. A shot of a thermometer establishes that it is very hot. The camera again pans the courtyard, where we see a bit more of the neighbors, including such provocative sights as the dancer strapping on a halter-top. The camera then returns inside the apartment, tracking along Jeff’s still-sleeping body so that we see his pajamas soaked in sweat and his name inscribed on his cast. As the camera continues to track into the room, we learn from the photographs on the wall and the cameras on the table that Jeff is a photographer, that he was probably injured while on assignment, and that he has a girlfriend who is a model or other celebrity. Her positive image is on the cover of a Life-life magazine while her negative is in a frame. The negative reinforces our perception of Jeff as a photographer (in the age of mechanical reproduction, a negative is the one truly unique image that a photographer can have) and, as a visual pun, even hints at his "negative" feelings for his love (soon to be reinforced by his dialogue with Stella).

Thus, in opposition to the eyeline matches and point-of-view shots that give Jeff information, we have been given independent information by the camera-narrator. This is another example of what Bordwell’s "self-consciousness" in narration, but here (unlike other forms of self-consciousness, such as those in A Star Is Born) the moving camera acknowledges itself as a witnessing presence in the diegesis—in other words, as a narrator. Furthermore, these camera movements occur not just at the beginning and end, but several times in the film. Each time, when the camera returns from panning the courtyard to Jeff’s apartment, he is markedly not looking out of the window. A couple of times he is asleep. Once he is talking to Lisa. Another time, he is kissing her. In each case, we are aware that we have seen something that he has not. Most of the time that information is not terribly important, but the pattern is established. We already know more information about Jeff from that first silent pair of pans than he might be comfortable with sharing with strangers. These long camera movements also are "self-conscious" as a typical trope of "Hitchcock" the career-auteur, mirroring the tour-de-force tracking shots from extreme long shot into extreme close-up of Young and Innocent and Notorious, not to mention the later revealing camera movements of Psycho. As such, this particular pattern of panning the courtyard without Jeff’s awareness is a mark of narrational authority and a signifier of "Hitchcock" as implied filmmaker.

The difference between these two distinct narrational modes (Jeff as focalizer and the camera-narrator) might be of little importance (similar—if less obsessive—divisions can be found in many films) except that they underline a tension between characters as "interest focus" regarding "rear window ethics." Jeff, and eventually Lisa, operate on the assumption that human behavior is comprehensible, that people will act in particular ways for particular motives and that those motives can be discovered through careful observation of behavior. Most obviously, this assumption applies in relation to Thorwald and his wife. Jeff and Lisa come to believe that Thorwald has acted suspiciously and inconsistently, thus offering circumstantial evidence as to his guilt. Doyle counters with contradictory evidence that was unavailable for their observation and also offers the opinion that people’s behavior cannot be explained, that mere observation is not enough to prove anything and that spying on people is not only unethical but ineffectual.

Doyle would at first seem to have the upper hand in the argument. Not only is his evidence fairly convincing, but his point is illustrated when Doyle looks bemusedly at the nightgown in Lisa’s overnight bag. "Don’t go there, Tom," Jeff warns his friend. To cap Doyle’s argument, moreover, through that independent panning camera-narrator we have been privy to information that Jeff does not have. While Jeff was sleeping on the night of the supposed murder, the camera showed us Thorwald leaving his apartment with a woman whom we might suppose to be the wife, as Doyle later suggests. In short, the camera-narrator has given us information that we are likely to take as true, especially because it has not been filtered by the visual and mental perceptions of others.

It is the "objective" camera-narrator, though, that turns out to be unreliable. The woman was Thorwald’s mistress, leaving with him for show and to give him "proof" that no murder had been committed. Jeff’s suppositions, formed and reinforced by his observations, turn out to be correct. And so, in a sneaky narrative move, "rear window ethics" become validated after all. We can understand people from how they behave and what they do. The characters and their interpretations are more reliable than the visual information provided first-hand, as it were, by the camera.

If the camera-narrator turns out to be fallible, the implied filmmaker has not yet finished having his say through that same agency. In the film’s final panning shot of the courtyard (initiated by a shot of the thermometer, which now displays a much cooler temperature), we see that the narrative has literally come full circle, with all the storylines of the surrounding neighbors resolved. The composer, whose song had halted Miss Lonelyhearts’ suicide attempt, has completed the work and is playing it for her. The older couple has a new dog to replace the one Thorwald had killed. The Thorwald apartment—now empty—is being repainted for new tenants. The sculptor has finished her work and is asleep. The Homeric honeymoon of the newlyweds is finally over as they raise their shades and start quarreling. Most important, Lisa’s interpretation of Miss Torso’s behavior turns out to have been the correct one: her boyfriend, a nerdy-looking little G.I., returns and heads straight to her refrigerator as the dancer joyfully welcomes him.

While the camera pans the courtyard this one final time, these individual moments are also united by the soundtrack as the composer’s song is heard wafting through the air. Earlier in the film, when the composer began playing an early draft of the song, Lisa had been caught up by it, remarking that the wordless music seemed to be telling a story and that "It might be a story about us." The composer’s effort is also given special emphasis early in the film because it is in his apartment where Hitchcock makes his cameo appearance. Thus the referent image of the director serves to signify his authorship and to mark this particular location as of special importance—a puzzling implication at the time. Even greater emphasis is put on the moment when Hitchcock directly returns Jeff’s gaze, the only "neighbor" besides Thorwald to do so. The composer also has played a small but important role in the narrative because his music stopped Miss Lonelyheart’s suicide attempt while Lisa was above her in Thorwald’s apartment, thus eliminating a possible deadly complication for Jeff and Lisa.

Now, as the camera returns to Jeff’s apartment, he once again is asleep with his back to the window. The camera then pans right to reveal Lisa at first reading one of Jeff’s adventurous memoirs but then exchanging it for the fashion magazine Bazaar. The humorous movement is filled with ideological nuances, but the moment is capped by the end of the song, whose agency was previously endorsed through the visual referent of the implied filmmaker. The title of the song, it turns out, is "Lisa"—it is a "story about us" after all! The interest focus of the characters, based on their roles as visual filters, is validated. By implication, so are the projections that we as filmgoers make with the characters that we watch on the screen.[16]

Why hasn’t the interaction of these two visual modes of narration with the song and the ethical debate received more attention from critics? One answer may be that the song simply is not memorable enough. Rear Window, with a score by Franz Waxman, comes between the director’s longer-term collaborations with composers Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernard Herrmann, and the result was not totally happy. Hitchcock complained to Truffaut that he was not pleased with Waxman’s efforts: "I wanted to show how a popular song is composed by gradually developing it throughout the film until, in the final scene, it is played on a recording with a full orchestral accompaniment. Well, it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, and I was quite disappointed" (Truffaut 216). The effectiveness of agency, whether of a narrator or an implied filmmaker, requires the perception of that agency by the spectator. Even if we recognize Hitchcock himself but fail to hear the song as meaningful, by definition the song has no meaningful function within the text. Thus, without careful attention, a viewer might miss the degree to which Rear Window is not only one of the most entertaining but also the most formally precise and rigorous of all of Hitchcock’s films.