One of Hitchcock's best. Nearly as great as Psycho.

Rating: 10/10 (2 April 2001)

Rear Window is Alfred Hitchcock's comment on the voyeuristic quality of society (`We've become a race of peeping toms'). It is the story of a man bound to a wheelchair by a broken leg who sees what he believes to be a murder being covered up in an apartment across the courtyard from him.

James Stewart delivers an excellent performance as L.B. `Jeff' Jeffries, the magazine photographer who is bound to a wheelchair and who finds himself spying on his neighbors, at first out of boredom but very soon out of strong suspicion. This is a very talky thriller and is limited entirely to what is seen from Jeff's large apartment window. The fact that the entire two-hour film takes place in such a small setting is a strong statement about Hitchcock's tremendous skills as a director. He makes the film interesting in countless ways, such as his excellent, meaningful use of shadows, the very thorough character development, his interesting use of symbolism (such as Jeff's difficulty in reaching itches underneath his cast), not to mention the amazingly effective suspense, a Hitchcock trademark.

Just before Jeff notices some suspicious events occurring across the courtyard, he is constantly complaining about not being able to find any interesting work as a photographer, and it is ironic that he soon finds something interesting right outside his own window, and while he is confined to a wheelchair, no less. The fascinating crime story of the man across the courtyard having murdered his wife is made even creepier by the fact that it is all deducted from behavior that Jeff sees out his window, and we don't even find out for sure if he is right or not until the film's exciting climax. Hitchcock fans are also likely to notice a line of dialogue that may have foreshadowed some of the events that were to later take place in Psycho, such as the insurance company nurse's speculation that the killer must have cut up his wife's body in the bathtub (`That's the only place he could have washed away the blood').
Another thing that sets Rear Window aside from other thrillers (including its own 1998 re-make which, incidentally, was far superior to the 1998 re-make of Psycho), was the way that it had several stories going on at the same time, which is one of the ways that it was able to remain so interesting. Jeff is an injured photographer, he is unsatisfied with his work, he is having a dilemma about marrying his sweetheart because he feels she is too perfect for him (the flimsiest excuse on the planet, of course, but he actually makes it make a little bit of sense), and then he comes across these events across the courtyard from his apartment that make him think that there has been a murder over there, and the murderer (Raymond Burr) is trying to cover it up.
Some of the things that happen in this film are not perfect, or seem uncharacteristic of Hitchcock, but the film as a whole is still spectacularly effective. For example, as a Hitchcock scholar, I found it strange that the killer strangled the dog and left it in the middle of the courtyard for all to see (and for Jeff to make revealing conclusions about). Think about how much more effective this would have been if the woman who owned the dog had just stood out on her porch calling for him, and he never came. This way, the realization that the man had killed the dog would have been much more gradually realized, and may have made the suspense created by it that much more impressive. At any rate, this is an outstanding film, and Hitchcock definitely created an amazing amount of suspense with such limited means, leading up to a tremendous climax that provided a quick but satisfying ending to this classic film.