The Trouble With Windows

On voyeurism, the flaneur and Hitchcock’s masterpiece Rear Window (Filmstack Inspiration #69)

This post is part of the FilmStack : a growing community of filmmakers on Substack. Thanks to Ted Hope, Donny Broussard, and Avi Setton for setting off this brilliant initiative. Over a month ago, Ted asked: What would happen if someone on FilmStack challenged themselves to write a post with five inspirations each day?

For filmstack inspiration #69, I was in a conundrum: do I write about my experience with The Shameless, which possibly would have been more appropriate and covered a lot of industry issues or do I show off my essay skills? In the end, the fiction writer in me won over the screenplay writer and I decided to re write what has possibly been my favourite film essay.

I don’t write about new films. Rarely. Instead I write about films that I may have seen decades ago but that which stayed with me for some reason or the other. In many cases I write about only a particular scene.

Rear Window influenced me from a very little age—from Grace Kelley’s outfits to spying on my neighb…