Think but don't overthink

Rating: 8/10 (26 May 2018)

Hitchcock tackles our bizarre fascination with voyeurism. After all, what are movies but a godlike ability to watch a story play out without the actors acknowledging the audience?
Filmed brilliantly, so that you feel just as James Stewart does in the film: that you're watching people who don't know they're being watched. The next-level mastery from Hitchcock is that you're watching people who don't know they're being watched watching people who don't know they're being watched. At the center of this masterpiece was witnessing how voyeurism transforms Lisa from conservative cosmopolitan queen to the adventurous thrill-seeker that Jeff desired. A fine story in itself, if that is all that it was ever meant to be.
But as some reviewers have called out, this movie could have reached a whole other level of greatness, had it featured a final twist ending. And given the claims that this film was among the greatest ever, I fully expected a shocking twist! Among the areas my mind wandered: while Jeff and Lisa are preoccupied with a murder that never actually occurred...Lonelyhearts's suicide occurs in plain sight; the fire escape sleepers fall to preventable deaths; newlywed husband and Miss Torso start a steamy affair.
But the ultimate twist my mind swirled up: That Jeff was secretly being watched all along from another apartment across the way, by none other than Lieutenant Doyle who had been digging for dirt on Lisa in a scandalous corruption investigation. Can you imagine the horrifying paranoia when Jeff realized the tables were turned on him? Such is the greatness that I had imagined, fueled by the hype this movie still generates six decades later.
Alas, the twistless ending was plain and simple. With no expectations going in, I would have fully appreciated the fine camerawork and direction, all the more outstanding in the absence of a musical score. Instead I was left wanting more.