Crime Fiction

Crime Fiction is the genre of fiction that deals with crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. The genre can also be divided into four sub-genres; detective fiction, legal thriller, courtroom drama and hard-boiled fiction. The Crime Fiction genre emerged during the mid-19th century, although it can be difficult at times to tell where crime fiction starts and ends. This is largely attributed to the fact that love, danger and death are central motifs in fiction. Crime Fiction and the film industry have become more renowned over the later 19th and 20th centuries. This is largely due to both catering to the need of the average society to escape into an idealist world, where the good reaps the rewards, and the bad incur their punishment.

Alfred Hitchcock’s, Rear Window (1954), expands on traditional themes of the Detective Fiction Genre. The Hitchcokian film compels to audience into a thrilling crime story; one that ranges from rear-window observations of a ballet dancer to the murder of a salesman’s wife. The audience view’s the private lives of those within the closed walls of the apartments, where as the public is portrayed to be out past those walls. The ideal detective figure encompassed traits of superiority, intelligence, wit and a keen sense for observation. The lead detective in Rear Window is a sophisticated character that is not bound by the limitations of the law. This is explored through the use of visual aid and techniques, providing contrast and variation on the common themes within the genre.

Hitchcock is clear to make social class division shown in his masterpiece. The stark contrast of the character Stella, and how she knows right from wrong, is made evident speech about how the whole of society is the “watcher”. Stella’s wise word’s, prove that even a non-educated person can have words of meaning, a very rare thing during the times of which Rear Window is placed.

Hitchcock’s Rear Window is undoubtedly a film that is concerned...