A very inferior Hitchcock film

Rating: 4/10 (10 May 2017)

When this film was released, it was a big hit, but much of the reason for that was that Grace Kelly was in it, and she was the darling then. Also, people had not yet grown tired of James Stewart. But the film itself is contrived, artificial, tedious, unconvincing, and silly. Looking back now at the ethereal beauty of Grace Kelly, her perfect face, her perfect dainty profile, her perfect lips as she kisses, and her highly cultivated dreamy look which is meant to convince us that she is in love, it is a bit like remembering that one tried to eat the lace-like sugar ornament on the first wedding cake one encountered as a child: far too sweet, indeed sickly. The outrageous designer dresses and suits worn by Kelly in this film, including a ludicrously flouncy skirt, can perhaps be excused by the period, combined with a director indulging his well-known fantasies. But let's consider the film itself and what is wrong with it. For one thing, it is one of those films set in a single room which directors vainly imagine they can make compelling for the entire length of a film, but so rarely do. Alfred Hitchcock was notorious for preferring always to shoot in controlled studio conditions whenever he could, and would build whole exteriors inside a studio rather than step outside to the real thing where – what was it? – he was afraid of catching cold? No, it was insecurity and the need for control, especially control over those beautiful blonde victim actresses whom he wished to dominate either directly or through story lines. He could not kiss them himself, but he could have other people kiss them and film it. He could also punish them, or even murder them on screen. In this film, Grace Kelly is not killed, though she does have a serious scare. The story is about a press photographer who has broken his leg and is stranded in his small Manhattan apartment with his entire leg in plaster, sitting in a wheelchair by his large rear window. From there, he can spy on his neighbours, at first through binoculars, but later through a telephoto lens attached to his camera. It is summer in Manhattan, apparently August, when everyone in the 1950s was sweating and suffering from the heat, and air conditioners were not yet widespread. All the windows are open, one couple are sleeping at night on a mattress on an outside balcony, and everyone is on view, and one can hear everything and see everything. The photographer is played by James Stewart. He turns into a compulsive Peeping Tom because he is bored and, after all, he is a photographer who is always looking for things anyway. Stewart plays the role in his usual default manner, that of the droll and drawling good fellow. (His acting range was never broadband. He could always be counted on to be the same.) Grace Kelly flies in every evening in some fantasy gown or other to look after him. She professes that she adores him, loves him overwhelmingly, and why cannot they marry. He grumbles and complains both to her and his masseuse Thelma Ritter that Kelly isn't really what he is looking for. Pull the other unbroken leg! Grace Kelly not good enough for him? Try telling that to the public. The whole world was lusting after Grace Kelly at that moment, and tedious, drawling James Stewart wants to find someone better? How can she put up with him is the better question. And yet, this is what Hitchcock would have us believe. But she is having none of it, and will not be disposed of by her boring choice of husband-to-be. Being as well endowed with money as she is with good looks, she goes off to The 21 Club and orders a takeaway dinner for two. It arrives, carried by a man in a red bellhop uniform, and consists of a bottle of chilled Puligny Montrachet (of unimaginable expense in America then, and indeed now) and lobster thermidor. And thus her courtship of her reluctant photographer is carried out. She brings a small overnight bag because she is going to stay with him one night, and from it she pulls something long and silky. Shortly afterwards she emerges from the bedroom dressed in the most outrageous Hollywood floating negligee and strikes a pose in front of Stewart, asking him how he likes it (i.e., how he likes her). He remains indifferent. Surely erotic fantasy is here butting its head against a brick wall. Stewart remains more interested in spying on the neighbours. (Is he gay? What is his problem?) He rolls his jaw around and does a bit of drawling with it from time to time. Are there really no other takers on Kelly's Park Avenue? Must she really keep coming slumming in Lower Manhattan where her adored James Stewart overlooks a motley back yard with different small apartments inhabited by oddballs? (There is the usual irritating bad soprano practising her scales, an all too realistic touch, though we never see her.) Several of the oddballs are overdone, to say the least. The dancing girl in shorts is perhaps the most ridiculous. The story concerns Stewart believing that he may have witnessed the aftermath of a man murdering his invalid wife, cutting her body up and taking it away in stages in a metal suitcase. Everyone ridicules him for imagining this, but Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter end up believing him and try to collect additional evidence. This lengthy and languid attempt to keep us watching this dreary story is a complete waste of time.