Rear Window

Rating: 8/10 (27 June 2012)

"We've become a race of Peeping Toms", Stella (Thelma Ritter) claims in the beginning of the film. Hitchcock's films are often about more than a murder history. In Rear Window, he tackles voyeurism. When our own lives are uneventful, as Jeff's (James Stewart) is due to being confined in his apartment by a broken leg, we turn to others', or to gossip, in order to feel better.
What's interesting about the film is that just like the audience is hoping for some excitement in the neighborhood, so is Jeff. Stella might plant the seed in his mind, by predicting that he will "see things (he) shouldn't see". He then invites it himself, by gazing out the window and saying that "(he'd) welcome trouble". With the things he observes from his apartment, he then fabricates a murder mystery that he macabrely wishes to be true even when all evidence speaks against it. Even his initially skeptical girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), whose looks and first appearance are like a dream, joins in after a while, maybe as that is a way for her to finally get Jeff's attention. The fact that the theory later turns out to be true, in the twist-less final act that might be more of an anticlimax than a climax as it only confirms what we have suspected since about 40 minutes into the film, should perhaps be taken symbolically rather than literally.
With the apartment complex in Rear Window, Hitchcock has created a wonderful setting resembling a doll house, in which physical windows work just as well as windows into people's lives, or maybe one person's life, as there is sex, violence, loneliness and happiness to be found within the different apartments. Rear Window might not be Hitchcock's most suspenseful or entertaining film, but it is certainly one of his most fascinating.