Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (16 September 2008)

Some films show their age, and others do not. Despite its reputation as a classic of great film-making, Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window, unfortunately, shows its age far too much. No, it's certainly not a bad film, by any standard, and is a pretty good one, but it's not one of Hitchcock's best, much less a great film, nor deserving of any place in the Top 100 Films lists of the last few years. Technically, it deserves many plaudits, but what really fails is the screenplay, written originally by John Michael Hayes for a radio play, and adapted from a short story by Cornell Woolrich. Yes, one can suspend disbelief from night till day comes, but the whole idea that a man would murder his wife and cut up her body all in front of an open window is sheerly implausible, even back in the 1950s New York milieu the film takes place in. Even one of the film's characters, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) comments on that fact, but it's not with irony, which only highlights the film's greatest failing- its implausibility.
Now, there are genres where the suspension of disbelief is absolutely essential. For example, one of my favorite films from childhood, the original Planet Of The Apes (1968) requires a great suspension of disbelief, far more so than Rear Window does. After all, the Charlton Heston character, Colonel Taylor, a veteran trained astronaut and scientist, goes throughout the whole film not recognizing the sun and moon, the constellations, the unlikely evolutionary odds that humans and apes could evolve anywhere but Earth, and that the apes speak English, no less! It's not until he sees the wreck of the Statue Of Liberty that he realizes he's back on our world. I was four or five when I first saw the film, and knew it was Earth a minute or two after the astronauts arrived on the Planet Of The Apes. Perhaps too closely studying books on geology and science destroys a youthful ability to suspend disbelief, but the rest of the film was so brilliantly satirical that the implausibilities were minor solecisms. In short, there is no story unless we accept these liberties with common sense, including the fact that the astronauts could be frozen in suspended animation for two eons. It's an all or none proposition- accept, or walk out of the theater. Genres that depend on the implausible- like sci fi and horror, demand such of their audience, and once given it's foolish to quibble over things like time travel, faster than light speed, aliens, modern dinosaurs, ghosts, atomic age mutants, or the like.The plot is well known. While not a great film overall, Rear Window is a technically great film. The camera work by cinematographer Robert Burks is first rate, and the film goes over many standard Hitchcock themes such as voyeurism- especially apt in this cyberworld of 24/7 voyeurism, marriage as a horror, and challenging technical restrictions, as in Lifeboat and Rope. There are many small moments in the film that work for effect- such as pure mise-en-scene shots of Jeff or the neighbors doing minor things unrelated to the main tale. And, there is some comedy, such as after Jeff is tossed out the window, and Thorwald is arrested, Stella comments to the cops, 'I don't want any part of it', when asked about assisting in the search for Anna Thorwald's body. Still, none of the many pluses of the film are enough to lift the film up from a good, solid period piece, for Rear Window's reputation is based largely upon its claim to being a slice of 'realism'. It's not. It's far closer to melodrama with its reliance on coincidences and implausibilities- not to mention the very sexism of the premise that a woman is so predictable that even her murder can be deduced by small deviances from that predictability, to propel the main action along. And melodrama, while it can often be great fun, is almost never great art. Rear Window is vastly overrated, and no exception that proves the rule. It is the rule, and that's a fact no amount of suspended disbelief can alter.