Even Homer nods. (possible spoiler)

Rating: 10/10 (29 March 2000)

Hitchcock's most perfect movie, so perfect that it ALMOST seems unsatisfying. Compared to VERTIGO, where every loose end and ambiguity only leads one into an interpretive labyrinth, each piece of REAR WINDOW's puzzle seems to fit; there is little room for doubt. Interpretations are variations on two themes - a critique of voyeurism; and an investigation into heterosexual relationships (critics have been quick to pounce on the paralells between the Thorwalds and Jeffries and Lisa, their names all begin with 'L'), and the film is probably the best we have on both these subjects.
But, like Peter Wollen, I see Hitchcock as primarily a Surrealist, and read this way, we can return to the film all the ambiguity and doubt proper to Hitch's artistry. The film is about playing God. Two gods, the director and the lead character. It is important to note the difference, and Hitchcock does very clearly, because it is the disparity between the two that calls into question the very reality of the film itself.

Although the film we are about to watch concerns assault, murder, loneliness, attempted rape, and modern alienation, it opens with a score of uncommon jauntiness. Three blinds go up one by one, not by human hand, revealing the view from the rear window, the field of the film's play. The camera then travels through this field, introducing us briefly to the secondary characters and environs before finally bringing us to our hero, LB Jeffries, asleep on his chair.
This opening sequence is crucial in two ways. Firstly, the majority of the film's action arises from motivation inspired by Jeff's point of view. He sees a certain action, he interprets it, and the other characters act accordingly. He is a godlike character, in classic Hollywood close-up, while the little people he watches are boxed in their little lives like TV sets. He can even create people; before we even meet Lisa, he has provided us with a detailed picture of her, that she seems to conform to pretty well. He sees all, like God, and no-one can see him.
Except, of course, he doesn't. This opening sequence has already shown us things he hasn't seen. He is frequently missing important plot elements, through sleep, or watching someone else, or being bothered by Lisa. The sleep thing is important. Notice how many scenes begin with Jeff waking up, or how the climactic events, which fulfil his every prediction, takes place at night. Notice the repetition and circularity in the film, how certain scenes, patterns, motifs, colours return (eg. Lisa turning on the three lights), like signposts in a dream. Look at how a man in a cast, powerless, impotent (unable to even uncork a wine bottle) grows in power, turns two sensible independent women into his pawns.
Notice how Thorwald is his doppelganger, not an evil Other, how when he looks at Thorwald he sees himself, how Thorwald's window reflects on his lens, how the final struggle is less between good and evil, than an existential conflict of the self. Note the pattern of Jeff's viewing, especially the correlation between Miss Torso and the Thorwalds, he always turns from one to the other. Miss Torso represents sex, Jeff's lust; the Thorwalds death - the two are inseperable in his mind, especially when you consider Lisa compared Miss Torso's loneliness to her own.

Watch how the views across the street are less those of independent characters, than projections of Jeff's desire or anxiety - watch how each one seem to match his state of mind. Is it far-fetched to suggest that the whole film is Jeff's dream?
Even if you reject this extreme interpretation, Hitchcock's ironies are masterly. Jeff is a man whose career is to travel the world, who is a war hero, and yet is not only confined to a cast, but is forced to confront the notion of home, of melodrama, of the lives of 'ordinary' people who have to stay put and do the same thing day in day out. When you think about it, most of what happens across the street is the stuff of cheap novelette - Jeff obviously doesn't read very much (or else he wouldn't be spying) - haven't we all imagined scenarios for people we see on buses etc.

What about Jeff's fear of sex, his pleasure in onanism (figured in his continuous need to scratch)? Or, one of the most beautiful scenes in all Hitchcock (i.e. cinema), the kiss, where the film slows down, and the story becomes a momentary fairy tale, operating on a different temporal level, out of time - Jeff's problem is that he has too much time, too much of the same time. Hitchcock never features in the group of great 1950s melodramatists, but surely his subversion of the crime genre, and masculinity, is every bit as melodramatic as Minnelli or Ray.
The film, as well as sensing, years before Antonioni, urban alienation, also reveals the fears of men with no more wars to fight or Wests to win, and must stay at home, like women have always had to. Jeff's real pain is that Lisa is independent, mobile, earning as much, if not more, than him, and refuses to kowtow. Far from being a misogynist, as is his reputation, Hitchcock always shows how silly men are.
(Oh yeah, I forgot. It's a brilliant thriller too - I've seen the film a dozen times, and still get breathless and sweaty when Lisa goes into Thorwald's apartment. And the scene, where the dead dog is discovered (the only time until the climax any of the groundlings get more than a long shot) has the best editing since THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS).