I spy, with my little eye, the most overrated Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

Rating: 4/10 (7 February 2018)

This is likely to go down as the least popular user-comment in history, but then so be it. I believe in honesty and freedom of speech. Although universally considered as one of the top three (or maybe top five) best thrillers that Alfred Hitchcock made in his lengthy and undeniably brilliant career, I personally feel that "Rear Window" is the most overrated movie of all times and I sincerely can't fathom why it's such a cinematic landmark. I reckon that the basic plot idea is utmost intriguing and that it's rather inventive how the cameras film literally everything from within the same secluded living room location, but that about sums up all the film's strengths. The narcistic photographer L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) sits immobilized in his apartment, bound to both a wheelchair and a humongous plaster cast around his leg ever since he took too much risk during a photo shoot on a racetrack. Purely out of boredom, he begins to watch all his neighbors across the little cement garden. The watching quickly turns into observing with binoculars and then into spying with his most professional & strongest photo lenses. He then thinks he witnesses a middle-aged man murdering his wife in cold blood, but a befriended police inspector, his lovely girlfriend and even his nosy housekeeper have trouble believing him. I was particularly annoyed by the behavior and ignorance of the protagonist. Jeff is supposed to be an intelligent person, so he must understand or at least respect that the police can't just go invading someone's private property and interrogate them about a possibly felony for which there isn't any evidence. The entire film evidently revolves on L.B. Jefferies' arrogant persona, and of course it doesn't help that I never really liked the actor James Stewart. I can appreciate him when his characters aren't omnipresent, like in Hitchcock's "Rope" for example, but here he was rapidly getting on my nerves. The other characters, including Grace Kelly who never looked prettier, are downgraded to mere extras. I am also aware that practically every review praises that the powerful impact of "Rear Window" lies in the fact that it's a statement on the human towards voyeurism and blah blah, but to me a film has to be entertaining and plausible first and foremost.
"Read Window" along with "Vertigo" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" made me realize that can't get into Hitch's espionage or 'wrong-man-condemned' thrillers, and that I find his more polished thrillers extremely boring, unrealistic and overrated. I'm primarily a horror fanatic, and thus love the nasty Hitchcock films the most, like "Psycho", "Shadow of a Doubt", "Rope" and "Frenzy".