Human beingness do not do well with change . We dissent it and seek distraction wherever we can , especially in consequence when we should be appear within rather than out . That has only become a harder substance abuse to kick back , too , in the Internet Age . Why take forethought of our problem or acknowledge our own bent - ups when we can just see other peoples ’ life pass by in front of our eyes with just a few swipe of our fingers ? As Thelma Ritter ’s nurse , Stella , puts it inAlfred Hitchcock‘s 1954 chef-d’oeuvre , Rear Window : “ We ’ve become a race of peeping tomcat . ”
That phone line may have been write by screenwriter John Michael Hayes 70 old age ago , but it ’s only become more relevant in the decades since . It ’s a scuttlebutt aim in the film at Stella ’s client , L.B. Jeffries ( Jimmy Stewart ) , a thrill - attempt lensman who has been left flat - bound in a gargantuan , itchy plaster cast after breaking his leg during a business go wrong . With nothing to do but sit in his wheelchair and look out his apartment window , L.B. has taken to pass the metre by spying on his neighbors ’ lives through their courtyard window . Before long , he ’s become confident that one of his fellow renter , Lars Thorwald ( Raymond Burr ) , has secretly killed his married woman .
What follow is a paranoia - inebriate thrill ride through which Hitchcock and Hayes line up increasingly tense and playful ways to explore the material - life and cinematic allure of voyeurism . It ’s a film about the risk of distracting yourself that is itself an interminably entertaining , clever beguilement . As far as this writer is concerned , it is as perfect a Hollywood thriller as there ’s ever been . Thanks to its sweaty , passion wave aesthetic , it ’s also a great way to expend a September afternoon or night as we all wait for the dog days of summer to give style to fall .
Murder makes the heart grow fonder
Here ’s one thing you should be intimate about L.B. Jeffries : He does n’t require to be tied down . That fearfulness is exasperate by his offscreen hurt inRear Window , which has entrust him literally immobilize in his flat . He ’s a photojournalist who seems to give care more about the adventures his occupation supply than the images he captures — no matter of whether they involve nights spent sleeping on rock in the jungle or standing in the middle of a dangerous racetrack . If there ’s one affair he dreads , it ’s settle down . regrettably , that ’s exactly what his lash - smart married person , Lisa Fremont ( a luminous Grace Kelly ) wants him to do — with her , preferably .
The two are a classic example of opposites attract . L.B. is a curmudgeonly human race who ’d rather know out of his suitcase than an apartment . Lisa is a socialite who is always worked up to share the point about her newest attire or most late party . L.B. does n’t conceive they fit together . Lisa know they do . A majority of their early setting together are crackling sparring matches of flirtation and foiling . There is , in bend , immense pleasure to be found in witnessing how Stewart telegraphs L.B. ’s dearest for Lisa with his adore glances and smitten smiles even as the fibre repeatedly avoid committing to a veridical future with her . It ’s through Stewart ’s public presentation that we learn the unverbalised verity : L.B.doeswant to be with Lisa , but he ’s afraid of how subside down will alter his own image of himself . “ She ’s too perfect , ” he tells Stella inRear Window‘s opening scene . “ If she was only average . ” But if she was , of row , he never would have fallen in love with her .
In his growing fixation with the seeming disappearance of Lars Thorwald ’s once bottom - ridden wife , both L.B. and Lisa find a agency to get what they desire . He snaffle confine of a distraction from the existent event of his life story , as well as a chance to get another taste of the expiry - defying excitation that has long hold him . Lisa , meanwhile , sees an chance to prove to L.B. that she ’s not as slight or risk - adverse as he so steadfastly believes . Their twin desire culminates in a largely unsounded sequence in which L.B. watches as Lisa sneaks across his apartment building ’s courtyard and climbs through the windowpane of Thorwald ’s flat — depend for any proof that he really killed his wife . The scene is unbearably tense , and it ’s made all the more so by the distance Hitchcock fool it from . The director countenance it roleplay out in farseeing , steady camera Pan that repeatedly reenforce just how trivial L.B. will be able to do to assist Lisa if she gets becharm . I ’ve seen this particular dictated piece at least 100 times now , and I still feel my heart - rate quicken and my pharynx tighten every meter it commence .
There’s a reason why Hitchcock is called the Master of Suspense
Hitchcock has long been know as the Master of Suspense . When you watchRear Window , it ’s cleared why . The film is a slow burn of tensity , paranoia , doubt , and creeping dread — one that ends by using its own cinematic rule to short make you lurch forward . During Lisa ’s eventual encroachment of Thorwald ’s flat , for instance , Hitchcock expend the distance between it and L.B. ’s home , which had previously acted as a buff of well-off prophylactic for the witness , to make you fear even more for Lisa ’s condom . Then , after establish enough of a comfortable degree of separation between the motion picture ’s champion and antagonist across 90 minutes , Hitchcock makes your stomach spend to the floor by removing that space inRear Window‘s paralyzingly intense coming . Suffice it to say : In no other movie has a door easy opening ever been quite as terrifying . consequence afterwards , however , Rear Windowstill manages to end with a visual trick that ’ll leave you grin from ear to ear .
And therein lies the true magnificence of the pic . In an long time when it seems like so many movie are either too comedic or too dour — and not to advert entirely devoid of romanticism — Rear Windowhas a petty morsel of everything . It is funny and spectacular , romantic and shivery . As you watch it , you almost bury that the full motion picture is extend from within the confines of its heedless hero ’s flat . Hitchcock and Hayes meet L.B. ’s creation with so much life-time thatRear Windowfeels boundless , and that ’s to say nothing of how much the couple do to build out the miniskirt - domain of L.B. ’s apartment construction . Each of his courtyard ’s fellow resident gets a name , and we are given admittance to their lives in the form of self - contained , wholly optical floor . A songwriter struggles to end his latest piece . A ballerina fends off the advances of hands who require nothing more than to hold in her . A newlywed yoke ’s initially passionate life together finally give room to workaday mundanity .
Why Rear Window is still resonant after all these years
Nearly all ofRear Window‘s apartment stories are assure without any dialog . We see them unfold through the gaze of Stewart ’s world-weary lensman , and you could easily watchRear Windowwith the sound off and still empathize everything that happens in it . ( You would , however , miss out on some of the snappiest dialogue in film account . ) This not only reinforces Hitchcock ’s technical art as a filmmaker but it also leave the director to playfully research one of the most sympathetic aspects of movie theater itself .
As a variety , it put up viewers a window into man that are not our own , and we accept that chance as excitedly and ravenously as L.B. Jeffries does his peeks into his neighbor ’ lifespan . “ That ’s a secret private world you ’re bet into out there , ” Wendell Corey ’s doubtful constabulary detective , Tom Doyle , tell Stewart ’s L.B. at one decimal point in the film , and he ’s certainly not wrong . But that ’s the whole point .
rearward Window(1954 ) is available to hire now on all major digital program .
