Minimalist Suspense at its Best

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2007)

The night is dark, quiet. But at peace? No. Jimmy Stewart, playing a gritty photographer, sleeps in his wheel-chair, the victim of some car racing accident, the result of his attempting to obtain an extraordinary picture. Now he's fettered by a cast as the result of this daring attempt. A shadow moves over his sleeping body. Is it malevolent? A rival come to enact revenge? Or the grim reaper come to take Stewart's soul? NO! It is none other than the 1950's goddess of cinema, Grace Kelly replete with white gown, scarf and gloves. She moves over the drowsy photographer and plants a kiss on his lips. The shadow is not a monster at all but an angel from Hollywood Heaven. Stewart has died and gone to eternal Paradise where he will love and worship Princess Grace for eternity! But for most of the movie he doesn't quite realize that Kelly is a beautiful gift, even beautifully wrapped!
There are films, both old and new, which boast a "cast of thousands" and shot in 5 different continents. Well, there are few feature-length films that were shot only on one sound state. And maybe none that I know of whose primary shots are essentially a handful of camera angles from a single vantage point on that one sound stage. Yet this is what Hitchcock does to tell a very compelling story. And the viewpoint is a laid-up photographer played brilliantly by Jimmy Stewart who has nothing better to do than watch people through his rear window.
The focus is Stewart's suspicion of criminal acts by one of his neighbors who he can see across the way with either his binoculars or his camera with zoom lens. His suspicion is aroused through his habit of innocently spying on the the inhabitants of the buildings on his block. What's interesting is the amount of mileage Hitchcock attains from telling a story from this peculiar vantage point in the form of other sub-stories. There is the woman on the bottom-floor of the apartment across the way who can't seem to find the right man, dubbed "Miss Lonely Heart". There is another younger woman, a dancer, who can't seem to keep men away from her. She is named "Miss Torso." A songwriter and/or composer lives in another apartment. A newlywed couple move in to another apartment. As the story unfolds, the other stories unfold as well in different ways. And in addition to the main story, most of the other stories have some sort of resolution by the end of the film.
This cinematic concept is one of the most innovative techniques ever backed by a major film studio. Stewart is perfectly cast as the husky photographer turned amateur sleuth. Grace Kelly who only seems to get better with each viewing, plays Stewart's desperate girlfriend who is involved in the fashion industry on Madison Avenue. The characters seem made for each other like Dracula and sunlight. She loves the glitz and glamorous life of the sophisticated fashion crowd on Madison Avenue while he seems more at home crawling in the mud of another country to get the photograph of a lifetime. Thelma Ritter keeps Stewart in check as the reluctant nurse who tries to get him to take the plunge with Kelly and also gets caught up in the mystery. And Raymond Burr plays the man across the way to whom Stewart focuses his attention. His unsmiling haunting expressions are enough to portray his secretive character.
This is an absolute masterpiece of film-making. The dialog is fun, witty, sarcastic, with constant innuendos about love and marriage. Kelly plays the "straight-man" while Stewart get's away with lines that he'd be lynched for today by women's groups. The only thing that doesn't make sense: why is Stewart so reluctant to tie the knot with Kelly? Grace Kelly was probably the Cary Grant of actresses in the 1950's with millions of males looking on with absolute jealousy of her leading men. (I'm sure many men's heart went bust when she became Princess Grace) Of course, Stewart sees her as "too perfect", "too beautiful", and "too smart" for him. Ironically, the more he pushes her away the more she wants to come back to him. Which does point to one of the strangest foibles of the human psyche: when someone can't quite have something that he or she wants, the more he or she wants it!