"You asked for something dramatically different. You got it."

Rating: 10/10 (16 October 2009)

My Take: A Hitchcock suspense classic; the master at his best.
While VERTIGO still tops my list as my favorite Hitchcock movie, many will argue that his 1954 classic REAR WINDOW is his best movie. With a the master trademark "bomb-under-the-breakfast-table" suspense, matched with a perfect mix of romance and deft bits of humor, it's not hard to see why many of Hitch's fans regard this as the definitive Hitchcock movie.
Still one of the best of Hitchcock collaborators (and still one of my favorite actors), James Stewart plays J.B. "Jeff" Jeffries, an adventurous photographer who is stuck in his apartment while waiting for his broken leg to recover. To pass the time, Jeff watches his neighbors in the adjoined apartment buildings, watching their everyday dramas and goings-on. Perhaps one of the best qualities about the movie is Hitch and screenwriter John Michael Hayes introducing us to a series of quirky everyday characters like Ms. Torso (Georgine Darcy), a sexy partying ballerina; Ms. Lonelyhearts (Judith Evelyn), a heartbroken single woman; a frustrated songwriter (Ross Bagdasarian) whose a little lost with words; and a newlywed couple who confines their private dramas in a closed window (I think there's as much mystery behind those blinds as there is in the whole movie). Then there's Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), a traveling salesman living with his nagging sick wife. That is until he starts leaving his apartment every night, and his wife is nowhere in sight.
Stewart doesn't take sole credit; the glamorous Grace Kelly gives an excellent supporting performance as Jeff's up-class girlfriend Lisa who shares his enthusiasm with Thorwald's strange activities. Burr is subtly effective as the mysterious Thorwald (who doesn't utter a single line up until the climax) and Thelma Ritter is witty as Jeff's no-nonsense nurse. Even the background characters are excellent! It's a little slow-going, especially during the first half where several main and background characters are introduced, and the plot has been ripped-off and imitated several times that it has since become a cliché. Not that it matters. So it proves in the test of time, Hitchcock's original is still a classic and he's still head and shoulders above the rest.
Rating: ***** out of 5.