Pierre Huyghe Remake (Fenêtre sur cour), 1995

Pierre Huyghe's Remake is a re-filming of Alfred Hitchcock's iconic 1954 movie Rear Window. Using unknown actors and prosaic locations in the suburbs of Paris, Huyghe creates an everyday version of the famously glamorous source that stars Grace Kelly and James Stewart.

Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a movie about mise-en-scène, which takes as its subject matter the viewer’s presence and perception. An immobile person, Stewart, sitting by his window, reduced to a viewing position, interprets the romantic twists and turns of various couples.

Huyghe's Remake, an amateur film shot over the course of two weekends, follows the structure of Rear Window, using the same shots and the same montage. Each person repeats the original script word for word and replicates the stance of the actors in Rear Window. Thus, the person taking the role of Grace Kelly in Remake does not imitate the character played by Grace Kelly but the way Grace Kelly plays this character, the role.