Midcentury voyeurism

Rating: 8/10 (16 August 2002)

This is the quintessential Hitchcock flick, easy to understand, addictively interesting, featuring great stars (Grace Kelly and James Stewart), familiar bit players (Thelma Ritter in one of her best roles as Stewart's talkative nurse), and a kind of almost imperceptible satire on the human animal. In this case, Hitchcock has glorious fun displaying a whole range of human behaviors through the device of watching them through a Greenwich Village rear window before the age of air conditioners when everyone had to leave their windows open (and some even slept on the fire escape–I've done that) to cope with the appalling heat and humidity during an eastern seaboard heatwave.
James Stewart stars as L.B. Jeffries, an adventurerous photographer who has a broken leg and is confined to his apartment in a cast while it heals. Bored beyond belief, he becomes a voyeur of his neighbors. Meanwhile there is his girlfriend, none other than Grace Kelly playing a "too perfect" socialite intent on winning his heart and soul. Trouble is Jeff worries that it won't work out, that they are essentially incompatible, she a socialite, who always goes first class, he a roughing it man of the world comfortable with second class accommodations. Naturally the audience (me!) finds it incredible that he isn't madly in love with her.
Raymond Burr (long TV's Perry Mason) in gray hair and specks has an interesting role as Lars Thorwald, seen almost entirely from a distance across the courtyard doing very suspicious things with knives and suitcases and mysterious comings and goings in the middle of the night. Bored voyeurs wonder what is going on. There is some light romantic play between Stewart and Kelly, but it is decidedly secondary to the voyeuristic adventures seen through the rear window: the saga of Miss Lonelyhearts, the ardor of the newlyweds, the angst of the songwriter, the exhibitionism of the dancing beauty, the pampered dog in a basket, and Thorwald and his invalid and then missing wife. Hitchcock's America at midcentury. Each of the little stories within the story has a plot and a resolution: Miss Lonelyhearts finds her man. The songwriter finds somebody who appreciates his work. Dancing beauty's man (looking from a distance a little like Woody Allen in an army uniform) returns. The groom seeks a break from his exhaustive marital duties, etc. Hitchcock's sense of satire has the softest touch, which is why, I think, he is so beloved. In the final scene Grace Kelly, finding her man asleep, puts down the adventure book she is reading (for his benefit) and picks up Harper's Bazaar to check the fashions. One gets the sense of future marital bliss and especially, marital reality.
There is some tension and some mystery, but nothing too strenuous for little old ladies from Pasadena, and nothing to offend anybody and nothing too graphic. You can see this with the kids and your maiden aunt and all will find it interesting. See it for Thelma Ritter, the sadonic character actress of many films, most notably this and All About Eve (1950).
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)