Hitchcock gets us again

Rating: 8/10 (2 March 2008)

Alfred Hitchcock certainly lives up to his 'master of suspense' billing with 'Rear Window,' as it is one of the most suspenseful movies ever made. It's also probably the ultimate 'talk back to the screen' film. About a third of the way through till the end, you'll find yourself thinking and maybe even saying out loud, "Oh no!" and "don't go in there!" and "hurry before he gets back!" etc. So it's great fun to watch, a real nail-biter. The entire film takes place on one elaborately built set, the back of a four-sided, four-story apartment complex with a small courtyard in the middle. Watching 'Rear Window' is like watching a stage play albeit on a stage like no other. Everyone, apparently, can see into everyone else's apartment when the windows are left open, which they obligingly are, most of the time. This would seem to stretch credulity to the breaking point, since everyone is apparently just as oblivious to being watched, but one accepts it as crucial to the plot and after a certain point it hardly seems to matter. James Stewart stars as a man confined to his apartment in a wheelchair for several weeks due to a broken leg, and takes to, well, spying on his neighbors. What begins as a way to fend off boredom soon becomes an obsession. There is the newlywed couple (the only ones who typically have their shades drawn); a songwriter who plays his piano a lot; a single woman Stewart dubs 'Miss Lonely Hearts' because she imagines having suitors over for dinner; a gorgeous blonde who is forever doing exercises and dancing; another couple that sleep out on their stoop every night; and most importantly, a man (Raymond Burr) and his nagging wife. Stewart becomes convinced, after the wife disappears, that Burr has killed her and disposed of her body. Grace Kelly plays Stewart's girlfriend and Thelma Ritter, an insurance company nurse who checks in on him regularly. They are both skeptical at first of his theory but soon are drawn into it and become as obsessed as he is. I don't normally issue 'spoiler alerts' even though I'm always giving the end away, but since the build-up in 'Rear Window' is so crucial, I will this time. The only time I was disappointed in this film was at the very end. I was expecting some sort of twist or surprise ending, and the denouement when it came was no surprise at all, except perhaps in that it wasn't a surprise. Maybe that was the point. Frankly, I tended to agree with the police officer who occasionally dropped by Stewart's apartment to discuss the matter and ended up pooh-poohing most of Stewart's notions. All through the movie, Stewart's character reminded me of a conspiracy buff... one of those people who is convinced men didn't really land on the moon or someone other than Oswald killed JFK. Or in this case, is convinced through a lot of circumstantial evidence, some of it very questionable, that his neighbor killed his wife. But as I said, maybe that's the point, because the evidence Stewart sees is what keeps us in suspense for two hours. Is he right or is this just a bored man's wild imagination working overtime and a half? It's fun to conjecture the latter is true, even if the former was the correct assumption all along.