Alfred Hitchcock's glorious ode to pervy voyeurism. Jimmy Stewart gets kinky, Grace Kelly looks voluptuous and Thelma Ritter does the wise cracks.The dog digging in the dirt and Raymond Burr's menace are great. ( )

This terrific classic focusing on our fear of intimacy and tendency toward voyeurism is one of Hitchcock's most entertaining films. There are no crop dusters or other devices to provide the tension this time and it works in the film's favor. Rear Window is a more character-driven film and the suspense builds slowly into a bonafide thriller. Hitchcock understood that most people are more comfortable looking at the lives of others from a distance and explores this area of our personalities in entertaining fashion.

Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) is a professional photographer, wheelchair bound after an accident while on assignment. Grace Kelly is his icily beautiful and doting girlfriend, Lisa. Hitchcock added her to the cast as a romantic interest, because in the Cornell Woolrich story upon which the film is based, there is no romantic interest. Though I adore Kelly, as a Woolrich fan I have often wondered how much more the tension could have been ratcheted up without the secondary romanic angle — Stewart alone, with no one to help…

Jeff is feeling claustrophobic, not only about his immobility but also about his relationship with Lisa, whose patience and elegant charm as she tends to his needs and waits for him to ask her to marry him are truly put to the test. The no-nonsense practicality of his nurse Stella, winningly portrayed by Thelma Ritter, makes a fine contrast to Kelly. Jeff, stationary and bored to tears, begins secretly watching his neighbors across the courtyard through the lens of his camera, becoming involved in their plight as if following a daily soap opera; taking to heart their loneliness and finding great pleasure in their finer moments. But something darker begins to take shape when Jeff pieces together witnessed events in one of the apartments across the courtyard and comes to believe he is spying on a killer.

Both Lisa and Jeff's policeman pal Lt. Doyle (Wendell Corey) think someone is letting their imagination run wild, at least in the beginning. Jeff's own disbelief and his girlfriend's early scorn begin to wane, morphing into an evermore dangerous pastime when Lisa becomes Jeff's legs. Hitchcock uses the camera lens to show highlight the voyeuristic inclination of us all, as Jeff's seemingly innocent means of passing the time from afar threatens to turn into a personal confrontation which he may not survive.

This film takes the viewer from its light and breezy beginning to a more concerned tone, and finally panic in style. Like most of Hitchcock’s films in Hollywood, it is a bit too detached, but much less so than others during this period, marking this as one of his finest. Raymond Burr as the possible murderer creates terror just by his glance across the courtyard at the spying Stewart, while Kelly and Ritter give this film its footing, making the events completely believable.

Jimmy Stewart gave one of his finest performances here, marvelously conveying the frustration of becoming suddenly immobile, which leads him to live vicariously through the lives of his neighbors. A terrific film classic, perfect for a dark and stormy night with a big bowl of popcorn. ( )

I've viewed the Hitchcock adaptation many times but never yet read the Woolrich story on which it's based. In the film, we get almost nothing on the backstory of the murderer: when did he concoct the plan to murder his wife? Who was the woman he was seen leaving the apartment building with at 6AM? Was the person to whom he made long-distance calls the same person who feigned the postcard claiming to be his wife? Curious whether Woolrich provided any more of that detail, and any less detail on the various stories viewed through the window of Jeffries' apartment. ( )

A man with a broken leg takes an unhealthy interest in his neighbors.

I was never really with the characters; my prediction of how things would turn out tended to be the opposite of theirs at any given time, which means the suspense didn't work for me.

Concept: B
Story: B
Characters: A
Dialog: A
Pacing: B
Cinematography: A
Special effects/design: B
Acting: B
Music: B

Enjoyment: B

GPA: 3.3/4

(Sep. 2010) ( )

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
(source: TMDb)