Hitchock Classic

Rating: 8/10 (8 March 2004)

Rear Window is considered one of Hitchcock's classics, and is probably Jimmy Stewart's most famous Hitchcock Role. Stewart plays an adventure-seeking photographer who is laid up for seven weeks in his apartment with a broken leg. During this time, he has become vicariously involved with his neighbors; looking out his rear windows and following their lives. As the final week of his incapacity begins, he begins to suspect that one of his neighbors has killed his wife, and pretty soon his girlfriend (Grace Kelly) and nurse (Thelma Ritter) realize that he may be right.
I seem to get more out of Rear Window the older I get  there are subtleties to the relationship, and to the lives of the other apartment dwellers that I catch as an adult, and didn't when I was younger. One thing that has remained a constant however is the methodical pacing and the slow tension that builds up to outright terror. I get just as tense and nervous during the last ten minutes of the film as a 30 year old as I did when I first saw the film at age 10. It is only as I got older that I realized the helplessness of Stewart's character, and how important that element was to the plot along with its contribution to the uneasiness of the film.
I've heard more than once that people have been bored during this film  of course, that is an opinion and cannot be judged, but I find it hard to relate to that, as I believe that even without the elements of suspense, Rear Window still makes a great story and film: Which is just one of the many reasons it remains one of my favorite Hitchcock films to this day.
--Shelly