Alfred Hitchcock's voyeuristic masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (5 January 2010)

Alfred Hitchcock; what hasn't been said about this great man? I'm no Hitchcock fanatic, but I can comment on his significance as a great filmmaker. The man knew his way around the camera in ways that are highly instructive in how today's filmmakers should learn to make movies. One thing I have noticed about the few Hitchcock movies I've seen is that the man has an eye for simplicity - that is simply telling stories that by themselves seem insignificant, but something, I'm not sure what exactly, I guess just the way he tells his stories, composes his scenes, and directs his actors are nothing short of brilliant and instructive.
One of his more acclaimed and masterful films is 1954's "Rear Window," an adaptation of the short story "It Had to Be Murder" by Cornell Woolrich. "Rear Window" concerns wheelchair-bound photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries's (James Stewart) routine observations of his neighbors from his apartment perch overlooking a Greenwich Village courtyard, a "hobby" he takes to in order to ease the pains of boredom. At home recovering from an on-the-job injury, he keeps tabs on his neighbors, but as they say that curiosity killed the cat, Jeff thinks he gets wind of his neighbor Lars Thorward (Raymond Burr) murdering his nagging, invalid wife. Pretty soon Jeff's attempts to prove murder become an obsession, an obsession in which he also draws his socialite girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) and nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) into as well.
We really get to know the characters in "Rear Window," the other apartment tenants, I mean. Incredibly enough, we actually know very little of the main characters played by James Stewart and Grace Kelly. Both Stewart and Kelly are good in excellent, well-known performances. They are interesting characters by themselves and we get to know their problematic romantic entanglement... um, relationship, but Jeff's observations of his neighbors occasionally make them far more interesting characters. Through Jeff's observations and musings, we come to learn a lot about his neighbors, even though they themselves have little dialogue or screen time.
The film's message couldn't really be any more clear, and that's the moral and ethical questions of watching people when they think no one's looking, and the desire people have for privacy in their own homes away from stranger's eyes. I also think it goes a little bit deeper: people are strange, and they're even stranger behind close doors when they think no one's watching. But it's within those people's rights to be strange in their own homes, behind close doors. Sometimes, however, those strange activities can hide dangerous behaviors that can have great implications for those around them, as Jeff, Lisa, and others soon find out in "Rear Window's" inescapable, all-too suspenseful climax.
"Rear Window" is yet another brilliant and well-composed feature-film from Alfred Hitchcock. I'm giving the film a "10," like I have his other films, the best of which, in my opinion, is the landmark suspense-thriller "Psycho" (1960).
10/10