Rear Window is a Rarity - Even by Hitchcockian Standards!

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2015)

Rear Window is an intriguing, brilliant, chilling Hitchcockian study of obsessive human curiosity and voyeurism. It plays as the ultimate guilty pleasure treat (comparing the viewer to a voyeur who sits in the dark judging what he sees while being unobserved) and an extended metaphor to the illusory workings of the cinema.
The premise echoes the director's simple but lucrative narrative launching points. Jeff (James Stewart) is an action-hungry photographer who has spent several weeks in isolation, as a result of a broken leg that has relegated him to a wheelchair in his New York apartment. His social interactions are limited to his sarcastic massage therapist Stella (the deliciously acerbic Thelma Ritter) and a romantic interest with an unqualified patience (the marvelous Grace Kelly). From his apartment window overlooking a closed courtyard, the audaciously observant Jeff peeks at the busy lives of an assemblage of suburban tenants in perplexed fascination and witnesses everyone's dirty linen: suicide, broken dreams, and cheap death! There is an unsettling resonance in what his eyes and ears absorb. During a particularly humid night while Jeff drifts in and out of slumber, the foreboding figures across the yard are heard and seen in lightning-fast increments. There is a spine-tingling scream followed by stoic silence. The husband leaves the apartment in the dead of night, seemingly shaken, only to return later. By the following morning the wife is no longer seen from Jeff's vantage point, but where did she go?
Alfred Hitchcock crafts one of his most intelligently thrilling films (a sadistic pleasure in meddling in the questionable private lives of others), adapting an incredible tale of pure misanthropy. All those characters we glimpse across from Jeff's window are real people, given dimension by basic but brilliant filmmaking techniques. The most remarkable aspect is the way that it is filmed: the camera never strays from inside Stewart's apartment, and you never really realize that while watching the film. The screenplay by John Michael Hayes is an insightful amalgamation of character and behavior, and the dialogue is wonderfully used to accentuate details. Also, due mention is rightfully reserved for the three lead actors (Stewart, Kelly and Ritter) who play the material with orthodox conviction, as if oblivious to the monumental profundity stirring beneath them.
Rear Window has an infectious and savage charm that leaps beyond even the highest of expectations. What's more, it is also a vivid reminder of who Hitchcock was and continues to be: the quintessential voice of audacity in an industry starved for the guidance of progressive voices. Rear Window is a joy from start to finish!