Film and Literature - Aesthetic Parallels

It’s increasingly rare nowadays to find people who will opt for a book over the extensive collection of films and shows streaming sites such as Netflix have to offer. Films specifically have, for a long time, been seen as competition to traditional literature. I’m sure many of us, myself included, have chosen to watch the adaptation of a popular story (Pride and Prejudice personally comes to mind) instead of pushing ourselves through the classic novel.

I want to redefine the comparisons between film and literature. Perhaps the two have more in common than we have been led to believe. Can we even go as far as to consider film a TYPE of literature?

If you have had the pleasure to read the wonderful Rear Window/ It Had to be Murder, written by Cornell Woolrich, or more likely, watched the adaptation, Rear Window

, by the brilliant Sir Alfred Hitchcock you would have been exposed to a life that is not too dissimilar to the majority of our own in the current Coronavirus Lockdown. The main character, Hal “Jeff” Jeffries, or in the film adaptation L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries, is confined to his apartment after a photography accident, the only thing to occupy his mind being his window and closely packed neighbourhood. The story shows us the outlandish dangers of being a peeping Tom, as Jeffries begins to suspects there has been a murder in one of the apartments. 

The book itself takes a lot of care in describing the view from Jeffries' window. In fact, we are only given a brief introduction to Jeffries himself and his situation before an extensive description of each individual situation of his neighbours and their lives, “The idea was, my movement were strictly limited… Well, what should I do, sit there with my eyes tightly shuttered?” (Page1), “Just to pick a few at random: Straight over, and the windows square, there was a young jitter-couple...Three of the shades remained at normal height, the one masking the bedroom remained down”(Pages1-3). In contrast, the film shows us a viewpoint from both Jefferies and the unrelated observer as at one point we view Jeffries asleep, so we are aware that the story is not always coming from his perspective. I believe these to be two parallels which aesthetically portray the same idea. 

When we break the fourth wall of film we identify that the camera is acting as our viewpoint. We watch from the camera’s perspective, even when the camera takes on the form of a character. Similarly, with any written text we are a reader. A separate entity from the events of the story. Even if the story, whether from a film or text, involves us we are always distant and uninvolved. That’s one of the pleasures of escapism. 

    

So maybe there’s more to the idea of the peeping Tom in It Had to be Murder and Rear Window. Like Jeffries, are we not also peeping in on the events? 

As film is the visual storytelling and literature (more often than not) the written, we regard them as two different forms completely. But I would argue that this aspect of observing makes the two one in the same. We’ll delve into this a little more in the coming posts. But for now, what are your thoughts?

Do you consider yourself a literary peeping Tom?