The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window lecture

Believe me when I tell you that no one on the planet loves Alfred Hitchcock movies, particularly Rear Window, more than my beloved. Seriously. So unless a hospital emergency pulls us away I'd bet money that on Tuesday March 18, 2008 at 6PM you'll find us at the Speed Museum for the lecture The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.

In 1954, audiences were first treated to what is perhaps the ultimate Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rear Window. The film's unsettling murder mystery was certainly entertaining enough, but Hitchcock achieved more than the usual resonance with audiences, through the use of his mammoth set representing an apartment-house courtyard between West 10th and 11th Streets in New York's Greenwich Village. Hitchcock's apartments in Rear Window are emblematic of many factors common to American life in 1954, from new questions of privacy generated by smaller living spaces, to a need to individualize near-identical housing units, to the anonymity newly available to those who would live outside society's rules. The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window will attempt to demonstrate how the director used commonly encountered architectural elements and used them to manipulate his audiences into acceptance of the tale he wished to tell. Sandy McLendon writes about architecture and design.  His work has appeared in Old House Interiors and Arts & Crafts Homes, as well as Modernism Magazine, where he is a contributing editor. His book about the use of prefabrication in building custom housing, PreFAB Elements, was published in 2005 by HarperCollins. Admission is free. Presented in the auditorium.

Speed Museum
2035 South Third Street
Louisville, Kentucky 40208