Hitchcock emphasizes not only the growing suspense of the situation but stresses all the small, intimate dramas that go on....
Tools:
Recommend review to a friend »
"Rear Window" issued from Hitchcock's middle period in Hollywood, that time when the master director knocked off a remarkable string of classic hits: "Dial M for Murder" (1954), "Rear Window" (1954), "The Wrong Man" (1956), "Vertigo" (1958), "North By Northwest" (1959), "Psycho" (1960), "The Birds" (1963). The old man was on a roll.
The gimmick of "Rear Window" is simple but effective. Since movies are the ultimate voyeuristic medium, why not make the audience a party to the voyeurism of another? Of course, Hitchcock would never have admitted that his main character, played by the noble, upright, and squeaky-clean James Stewart, was actually a voyeur, but what else is one to make of a man who spends his days (and nights) watching the comings and goings of his neighbors in the apartment houses across the way? Hitchcock merely said Stewart's character was doing what anyone would do under the circumstances, peeking out of curiosity.
The movie is based on a 1942 short story, "It Had To Be Murder," by Cornell Woolrich (William Irish). Stewart plays a famous combat photographer, L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries, temporarily laid up with a broken leg, who has nothing to do one hot summer but stare out the back window of his Greenwich Village apartment, where he observes the people in a small a courtyard behind him as well as those behind the open windows of their various apartments. His insurance company nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), comes to visit him daily during his convalescence, and even she calls him a "Peeping Tom."
Anyway, this has been going on for six or seven weeks when Stewart notices a particularly suspicious character, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), whom he begins to suspect of having killed his wife and possibly cutting up her body and disposing of the pieces! A radiantly beautiful Grace Kelly plays Stewart's fiancee, Lisa Fremont, to whom he immediately confides his suspicions. After some initial skepticism, she, too, comes to accept Jeff's theory, and together they keep a closer eye on the questionable Mr. Thorwald and his strangely empty apartment. The only other character of importance is Police Lt. Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey), an old friend of Jeff's, to whom Jeff also confides his speculations. Doyle is singularly unimpressed, telling both Jeff and Lisa that they're imagining things.
Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes use a rocky relationship between Jeff and Lisa as counterpoint to the multitude of little dramas going on outside Jeff's window. Jeff, it seems, is usually on the road, working for a magazine in all the battle zones of the world. Lisa is a glamorous New York socialite who wants him to settle down to a nice, cushy job with a fashion magazine. You can see the conflict. But Thorwald and his missing wife bring Jeff and Lisa together in a common cause. The suspense mounts as the two heroes begin to pile clue upon clue and then finally decide that if the police aren't going to act, they are. The last half hour, especially, is a nail biter.
It's a remarkable film in several ways. First, it's daring in its choice of locale, the whole movie being set in a single room. Hitchcock had tried something similar in "Rope" a few years earlier, also with Stewart, and it backfired. This time audiences loved it. As Hitchcock explained it, you, the audience, look, you see what the screen character sees, and you see the character's reaction. So, it's a film mainly of reactions rather than much overt action. Some of our newer directors of would-be thrillers might learn a thing or two from the old master's restraint, rather than bashing us over the head with graphic bloodletting and pounding musical scores.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]6392[/release]