Rear Window (1954)

• Year: 1954
• Released: 01 Sep 1954
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Nominated for 4 Oscars. 6 wins & 13 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rear_window
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/rear-window
• Available in: 720p, 1080p, 2160p
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: PG
• Genre: Mystery, Thriller
• Runtime: 112 min
• Writer: John Michael Hayes, Cornell Woolrich
• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey
• Keywords: neighbor, whodunit, photographer, nurse, voyeurism,

	8.5/10
	100/100
	98% – Critics
	95% – Audience

Rear Window Storyline

Successful magazine photographer L.B. Jefferies – Jeff to his friends – is on week seven of eight of a cast on his broken leg sustained while on assignment, the problems being not only not able to work, but being confined to his Greenwich Village apartment over the course, now during a heatwave, with his only visitors being Stella, the acerbic-tongued insurance provided nurse, and socialite Lisa Fremont, a fashion reporter and his girlfriend. While he is aware that Lisa sees their relationship as *the* long term, Jeff is thinking about ending things with her in not seeing her following him around the globe in often less than comfortable situations while on assignment. With his apartment facing onto a courtyard surrounded by other apartment buildings, Jeff largely relieves his boredom by spying on his neighbors who have their windows wide open due to the heatwave, many whose stories, which he can only surmise by what he sees, are of a personal relationship nature: the lonely woman who tries to make her life less lonely, the dancer with many suitors who probably don’t care about her beyond her sex appeal, a middle aged couple who owns the neighborhood dog lowered down to the courtyard garden on a pulley system, and a man, seemingly a salesman, caring for his bedridden female companion, probably his wife, they all often serenaded by a songwriter on a piano as he works. While they are both disgusted by his voyeuristic activities for different reasons, Jeff is able to convince both Stella and Lisa that, based solely on his behavior, that the salesman most likely murdered his wife by mutilation, seemingly for another woman. While he also tells his fellow war veteran friend, now Police Detective Tom Doyle, off the record, Tom, while indulging him to an extent, is only humoring him in believing his imagination going into overdrive in his boredom. Left to their own devices, Jeff, Lisa and Stella enter into a game of cat and mouse with the salesman to discover evidence, the salesman who they learn is named Lars Thorwald, that game which may become deadly if what they believe is indeed true and Thorwald feels like he is being cornered.

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Rear Window Movie Reviews

In the mid-fifties, Hitchcock brought remarkable suspense by reverting to the logic of a silent film (with an observer behind the lens as the hero)

Many reviewers and critics have commented on Alfred Hitchcock’s theme of the voyeur in Rear Window (the mere thought of a voyeur in a suspense film conjures up images from other classic Hitchcock films), and I felt that voyeuristic bug as well. But I realized something that I hadn’t thought of as I watched it for the first time- this is a return for Hitchcock to his skills as a master of silent-film chills. As L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart in one of his most infamous performances) is in his wheelchair viewing out one perspective to other inhabitants in the apartment, the audience views right along-side him. So, for more or less 50 percent of the film, the only sounds we hear are the sounds of mere realism, as Hitch’s camera keeps a close eye on things.

As the thrills build in the second hour of the film there is considerably more dialog than the first hour. This could, and occasionally does, present a challenge for the audience member that could either be accepted & payed off or resented- can one sit back and just watch things unfold as in a film from the 20’s? Personally, the experience of seeing these events unfold and increase was near electrifying. Along with Stewart’s performance, which ranges from amusing to terrified, compelling to frightened (i.e. Hitch’s ‘everyday man’), there’s Grace Kelly as Lisa, who carries her own beauty & inner conflicts, and Raymond Burr as Thorvold, who could have things going a little better with his wife.

If we empathize with Jeff, it’s because we become as much apart of his mind-set/POV as he already is, and that’s the ticket to the film’s true success. Not only is there a magnetic kind of skill to which Hitchcock (and cinematographer Robert Burks) presents us with the apartments’ supporting and minor characters and how their fates are played out against the enclosed backdrop, but the psychology of Jeff becomes parallel, or against, to the audience’s. This is the story of one man’s temptation and compulsion to be involved with those he can see (much like movie-goers have with any given film), and how perception of the realities around him become ours. Rear Window may have become dated for some movie-goers, particularly since the theme has been played on by other movies and TV shows (like The Simpsons for example). Yet there is a certain effectiveness to it all, even in the earlier scenes, that holds an edge over imitators. A+

yep–it’s a good film,…but #14 on IMDb???