I'd be breaking out the binoculars too, if Miss Torso lived opposite me.

Rating: 10/10 (31 May 2010)

Psycho is definitely Hitchcock's most shocking film, thanks to its infamous shower scene and gruesome finale, but as far as pure suspense goes, it doesn't get much better than Rear Window, which sees the director wringing every possible ounce of tension from his ingenious premise: a professional photographer, confined to his room with a broken leg, wiles away the hours observing the lives of the people with whom he shares a courtyard; when he notices one of his neighbours acting in a very suspicious manner, he comes to believe that the man has murdered his wife.
James Stewart plays L.B. 'Jeff' Jeffries, the poor guy confined to a wheelchair who notices unusual goings on in the apartment opposite; Grace Kelly is his adoring but seemingly incompatible socialite girlfriend Lisa; Wendell Corey is disbelieving detective Lt. Thomas J. Doyle; Thelma Ritter is L.B.'s advice-giving nurse; and Raymond Burr is the surly and burly salesman with the missing wife. This excellent central cast is supported by a raft of brilliantly developed incidental characters without whom the director's main theme of voyeurism would be worthless: L.B.'s spying is ultimately justified by the fact that he solves a crime, but by having his protagonist also invade the privacy of many other individuals, Hitchcock is questioning the ethics of 'innocently' snooping on strangers.
And the director makes us, his audience, feel just as culpable: not only do we join L.B. in his dubious hobby of peeping through the window, but as the viewer of the film, we are made to feel doubly guilty, for we are also poking our noses into the troubled relationship between L.B and Lisa.
In addition to all of this interesting investigation of the human psyche, we also get a damn good thriller to boot, one which sees Hitchcock at his very best, weaving a taut tale that delivers the mundane and the macabre in equal doses, but which builds inexorably to a hugely exciting climax. There are several excellent edge-of-the-seat nail-biters on the way to the final showdown between L.B. and the killer that sees the photographer fighting for his life as he is slowly pushed out of a window several stories up—it's a guaranteed heart in mouth moment if ever there was one.
After all of this intense action, Hitchcock rounds off the film with a superb ending that lightens the mood perfectly whilst clearly displaying the director's somewhat warped sense of humour: there's a happy ending for all of the people who have had their privacy invaded, Lisa has successfully convinced her man that she can be as adventurous as he is, but poor old L.B is still stuck in the same boat—he's in a wheelchair, and now he has two broken legs!!!