Friday Filler: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

The film Rear Window is a classic thriller, regarded as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best. It combines claustrophobia and voyeurism in a murder mystery which plays out from one point of view, that of Professional photojournalist L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies. Following an accident whilst getting a front cover shot, he is confined to a wheelchair with a leg in a cast in his Greenwich Village apartment. With nothing to do and armed with a telephoto lens, he starts watching his neighbours whom he can see through the rear window of his apartment and into theirs. Sitting in the darkness he observes them going about their daily lives and as he becomes more obsessed about them, he suspects that one of them has committed a murder. It is a fantastic set-up for a film and if you have never seen it, you really should. It has parties, knives, bickering, laughing, weeping, music… and a mysterious trunk! In fact, you should definitely see it before playing Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, a board game designed by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games. However, you can play the game without watching it because the set-up is simple and you are not actually playing the role of L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies and his friends, although they do play a part in the game.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is designed to be played by three to five players, aged thirteen and over, and be played in less than an hour. The game is about solving the mystery of what can be seen through the eponymous window. Sometimes it will be murder and sometimes it will be not. One player takes the role of the Director who randomly sets up the mystery (or the murder if the mystery is a murder), whilst the other players are Watchers, who over the course of four days (or rounds), look through their window into the apartments of their four neighbours. However, they know nothing about their neighbours—who they are, what they do, and what they are like—and this constitutes the mystery at the heart of the game (in addition to the murderer, if there is a murderer) that they need to solve by the end of the fourth day. The elements that make up this mystery are represented by Resident and Attribute Tokens. Of course, the Director knows everything, but can only communicate to the Watchers via the cards he plays from his hand. For the Watchers, interpreting these correctly is key to winning the game.

At the end of the game, if there is not a murder, both Watchers and Director win if the Watchers correctly guess all eight spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens behind the Director’s Screen on the Solution Board. Otherwise, they all lose. If there is a murder, the Watchers win if they correctly identify seven or eight of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and the identity of the Murderer. However, if the Watchers only correctly deduce six or seven of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and fail to identify the Murderer, then they lose and the Director wins. Lastly, if the Watchers only work six or fewer of identities of seven or eight of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and fail to work who the Murder is, then again, everyone loses. Thus, depending on the set-up, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is either a co-operative game or a semi-co-operative game.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window comes richly appointed. There are a Director Screen and a Watcher Screen, four Day Boards (one for each round), Solution Board, four Watcher Placards, seventy Window Cards, one-hundred-and-two tiles, forty-five Resident and Attribute Tokens, a Trunk Box, four wooden cubes, and the Rulebook. All of the components are of good quality, but the artwork is exceptional. Instead of using photographs from the film, the game uses painted illustrations which capture the period and feel for the film as well as the likenesses of the main cast on each of the four Watcher Placards. Even the front of the Rulebook replicates the photograph of the Grand Prix accident that L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies shot and which landed him in a wheelchair!

At the start of the game, the Director randomly draws eight Resident and Attribute Tokens and lays them out on the Solution Board he keeps behind his Director Screen. Any Tokens not used, go into the Trunk—a little cardboard trunk made to like the one used by the murderer in the film! Each day consists of three phases, the ‘Window Phase’, the ‘Deduction Phase’, and the ‘Scoring Phase’. In the ‘Window Phase’, the Director draws eight Window cards and plays them on to the current Day Board to represent what L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies (and the Watchers) can see from his apartment. Each Window card depicts a scene in a neighbouring apartment and shows an array of elements. One can show a woman in a yellow dress about to move a dining chair, there is a meal and a glass on the dining table, whilst on the wall there is a painting of a waterfall and a lake, whilst on another there is a low table upon which stands two full cocktail glasses and a very full jewellery case behind which on the wall is the shadow of two women clasping hands. Notably, there is even one of Hitchcock himself adjusting the hands on a clock that stands on a mantlepiece next to some books, whilst a phonograph plays in the foreground, just like his cameo in the film. There is no text on these cards and both Watchers and Director are free to interpret the images in any way that they like.

Most of the time, Window cards are played face up, but they can be played face down as if the window the Watchers are looking through is closed. The Director will do this if he feels that a Window card cannot impart any clues (or even too many clues if there is a Murderer!). If a Director does not like the Window cards he has drawn, he can use a Cut token to discard and redraw as many as he likes, but this can only be done three times.

In the ‘Deduction Phase’, the Watchers ponder the current Day Board that the Director filled out in the ‘Window Phase’. They can also look at any previous Day Boards as there may be linked clues, but on the current Day Board, after some discussion and deliberation between themselves, they place four Resident Tokens and four Attribute Tokens indicating who they think are involved in the mystery. If there is a murder and the Watchers think they know who the murderer is, then they also add a purple token to indicate that. The Watchers can also use the Watcher Placards, of which there are four, representing the film’s main cast. For example, the L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies Watcher Placard is ‘Hand me the binoculars’ which forces the Director to discard a Window card placed face down and replace it, whilst the Lisa Fremont Watcher Placard is ‘Breaking and Entering’ which enables the Watchers to ask the Director which is the most important feature on a particular Window card.

In the ‘Scoring Phase’, the Director compares the four Resident Tokens and four Attribute Tokens on the current Day Board with those on his Solution Board and marks how many the Watchers have got right.

The play of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is about imparting information that the other players will try and guess correctly, although that will change slightly if there is a murder, in which case the Director needs to impart enough information so that the Watchers can get some details of the solution correct and so avoiding having everyone lose, but not enough that they guess everything, including the identity of the murderer and so win. Not every play through of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window involves a murder, but when it does, it changes the way in which the game is played. The communication is done silently by the Director via the Window cards and since they are randomly drawn each Day, he will not always have the most obvious cards to play. He will thus be trying to play the best Window cards that he can, the ones that he thinks will impart the clues he wants to get across. After that, it is down to the Watchers and their interpretation.

As has already been pointed out, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a very fine looking game. The rulebook itself is very well written and takes the players through the set-up process and the play of the game with ease. There is even advice on how to set up the tray that holds all of the tokens and there is an FAQ at the back. The rules are simple and clearly written.

The film Rear Window is the last film that you would think suitable for a board game adaptation. Yet it works and it works well, it has a fantastic sense of claustrophobia, voyeurism, and potential for the misreading of the situation, just as the film does. Plus, there is that question it constantly asks us, “How well do we know our neighbours?” Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a fine social deduction game that fans of the classic film will love and players of similar games will enjoy.