Very solid, if not exceptional.

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2012)

When talking of Alfred Hitchcock's, most people name Rear Window as one of the finest works of his legendary career. While I think it's a very good film, I can't say I agree. The premise is genius. Jimmy Stewart plays L.B. Jefferies, a photographer who is stuck in a wheelchair for another week until he gets his cast off and finds himself passing the time by spying on his neighbors. Hitchcock is brilliant here at making this small world feel so alive and always moving. No matter who Jefferies is watching at the time, you can always here plenty of different things going on in the other apartments in the courtyard.
Each resident is given their own story and formed character to create this full environment for Jefferies to exist in. It never feels like the characters are existing just for the basis of our story, but rather that they genuinely do exist in their own private lives and we are spying on them out our window. The film opens up some interesting topics on voyeurism, how in private people will do things that could seem incredibly strange or suspicious to someone who is watching from an outside perspective, and whether someone would have the right or moral obligation to try and do something if posed with a conflict such as the one Jefferies faces.
Written by John Michael Hayes, adapted from a short story by Cornell Woolrich, Window begins to focus itself on a mystery that opens up when Jefferies suspects one of his neighbors of murdering his wife. The culprit is Lars Thorwald, played by the great Raymond Burr, and Jefferies finds himself obsessed with finding out what happened to Thorwald's wife on a night where he heard a scream and Thorwald left his apartment several times with a case in the dead of night. This obsession drives him, eventually bringing in the help of his girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), his caretaker Stella (the delightful Thelma Ritter) and detective friend Thomas Doyle (Wendell Corey) to try and uncover the truth.
My only complaint with the film is that it didn't really drive me. I thought that the staging of everything was brilliantly done, but the actual unraveling of the mystery just didn't compel me at all and left things kind of flat for several stretches in the middle of the picture. I have to admit that I've never been much for Jimmy Stewart as an actor. I find him likable on occasion but for the most part he's so non-engaging to me, and I think my lack of interest in him may have been the cause of my lack of interest in a lot of the mystery. I've always considered Hitchcock, as many do, the master of suspense and been able to admire his ability to bring intensity out of even some of the most mundane sequences.
An experience such as Stewart following Kim Novak's character in his car in Vertigo could have been a dull endeavor if another director had been behind the camera, but with Hitchcock he turned it into a gripping journey and so I was disappointed that he wasn't able to do much of the same for me. It didn't really hinder my appreciation for long though, as the film builds to it's climax where the tables are turned and Thorwald begins to become aware of those conspiring against him, turning this tale of voyeurism into a thriller of potentially grave consequence.
The set up of placing characters like Fremont and Stella in danger while Jefferies has to sit paralyzed, completely unable to defend those he cares about from the violence occurring right before his eyes, added a "can't turn away" suspense in the final act that was absolutely worthy of the Hitchcock name. That final act sings with a power that completely made up for the dragging bits in the middle. Not one of Hitchcock's best, but a worth addition to his wildly impressive career.