Vastly Over-rated

Rating: 6/10 (8 September 2000)

I recently saw the restored print of this "classic" with some friends at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. After it was over, we all kind of stared at each other with slightly pained looks on our faces as if afraid to say what we really felt. But none of us is truly that bashful about voicing opinions and it turned out we all shared the same one: namely that Rear Window was decent, but it was certainly no masterpiece and fell well short of our expectations. I suspect the entire audience felt that way as there was very little crowd reaction to the film throughout and only polite applause at the end. This is in marked contrast to the palpable thrill that the crowds at the Music Box's recent Kubrick film festival exhibited.
I thought the film was slow paced and rather dull, and was over-dominated by subplots. The suspense level was low throughout much of the film. There were a few interesting vignettes about the lives of the various people who lived in the apartment building on the far side of the Greenwich Village courtyard, but ultimately these weren't enough to put this one into the above average category.
I will confess that I've never been a big Hitchcock fan despite enjoying psychological thrillers. So maybe that accounts for part of my shoulder shrug of this film. Regardless, while I'm glad to have seen the film, I don't think I'll ever take the time to watch it again and I didn't come away impressed from my first screening.