Rear Window [DVD] [1954] - alfred hitchcock

Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment convalescing in a wheelchair from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder. Photographer L.B. 'Jeff' Jeffries (James Stewart) is in fact a voyeur by trade a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town as Thorwald insists or been murdered. Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff even as he's drawn into their lives) he and we watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script one woven not only into the couple's own relationship but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbours' lives. At minimum Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humour right up to its nail-biting nightmarish climax. At deeper levels however Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland