You Can Cut The Tension With a Knife

Rating: 10/10 (4 February 2018)

James Stewart plays L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies, a professional photographer who is confined to his wheelchair after an accident on the job. His injury also confines him to his apartment, only having his girlfriend, Lisa Fremont, played by Grace Kelly and his nurse, Stella, played by Thelma Ritter come visit him. To combat boredom, Jeff sits by the rear window of his apartment and observes his neighbors from across the courtyard in their apartment complex. As he observes he gives the other tenants playful nicknames like a single woman he calls "Miss Lonelyhearts" and a dancer he calls "Miss Torso". While Stella tells him, "The New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the work house", his voyeurism is exactly what allows Jeff to witness what he believes is his neighbor, Thorwald, murdering his wife. With the help of Lisa and Stella they try and catch the murderer without being murdered themselves.
99% of the movie is seen through Jeff's eyes, as told by a lot of point of view shots of the apartment courtyard. The camera pans to show whatever Jeff is looking at. Jeff often looks through his camera lens to observe his neighbors, with the movie showing what he sees through the lens. This was a masterful way of Hitchcock blatantly showing the audience the whole premise of the movie. The audience is just another camera in the room, because we are constrained as much as Jeff is. He also creates a powerful story by using a three-part point of view shot constantly throughout the movie. It starts with shot of Jeff looking out his window. It then cuts to a shot of the courtyard, focusing and moving wherever Jeff is looking. It then cuts back to a shot of Jeff to get his reaction. This three-shot approach allows us to feel whatever Jeff is feeling, while feeling like we are in the room with him experiencing it with him as well
"We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene."
The famous quote above is Alfred Hitchcock's famous quote about the difference between "surprise" and "suspense". Alfred Hitchcock's film Rear Window is a fantastic showcase between that difference with this movie having no "surprise" jumps, only lots of suspense. This is shown during the dramatic scene where Lisa enters Thorwald's apartment to obtain some evidence of the crime. The "bomb" in this case is Thorwald and his impending return to his apartment. Hitchcock heightens the suspense by moving Jeff's and the audiences view to Miss Lonelyheart as she is about to commit suicide. While this is happening, the "bomb is ticking under the table" as Thorwald returns while the camera wasn't looking.
That scene also highlights the feeling of being "trapped" that the movie creates. Since we are limited to Jeff's perspective, it feels like we are trapped in the apartment like Jeff. When Thorwald returns we feel as helpless and Jeff and can only watch from afar and hope that the police show up on time.
The set in the movie is clearly meticulously crafted and adds to the quality of this movie. It was built to resemble a Greenwich apartment complex. As the camera pans around you can start to feel the sense of space in the complex and start to remember the locations of the various tenants. Also, as the tenants pass from room to room in their apartments you can see the care that went into what the audience can and cannot see from their "seat" in Jeff's apartment.
Hitchcock crafts an amazing thriller with the tension getting so thick that you could cut it with a knife. This is a fantastic movie and should be seen by any fan suspense movies.