A classic, but also an old favourite ...

Rating: 10/10 (13 December 1999)

Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) is confined to his apartment for some weeks. Lacking anything more interesting to do, spends his time watching all the people in the apartments across the courtyard, one of whom, he soon thinks, has murdered his wife ... and so on. Everyone knows everything about this film already. Everyone knows that every single shot is taken FROM Jeff's apartment. There are no gratuitous close-ups of the people on the other side - except, of course, when Jeff gets out his telephoto lens. So there's never any doubt what we're meant to know, or what we're meant to think that Jeff knows, or anything of that kind.
It's soon obvious to most people that the open windows across the courtyard look exactly like movie screens. Many consider this to be a comment on the voyeuristic nature of cinema. Hitchcock himself thought as much (perhaps prompted by François Truffaut). Well, it isn't. It's clear that Jeff is looking at the lives of the people in other apartments AS IF they're movies, screened for his amusement; but the film is really saying, `Jeff is acting as if he's watching a movie'; rather than, `We, in watching the movie, are acting as if we're staring through other people's windows.' That's if you MUST read anything at all into Hitchcock's neat visual idea.
There's also an uneasy love story taking place between Jeff and a much richer woman, Lisa (Grace Kelly). Personally, if I were Jeff, I'd forget about Lisa Whatsername and concentrate on Miss Torso (Georgine Darcy), somewhere to the upper right. But even though the love story is beside the point the film wouldn't be nearly so good without it. Jeff needs someone close enough to be an ally when the story requires it, not so close as to simply be on the same quest he's on.
This is Hitchcock's most purely enjoyable film since he left Britain - which is to say, since `The Lady Vanishes' (1938). It still works even when you know it all by heart.