Up to Alfred Hitchcock's Standards

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2018)

Films directed by Alfred Hitchcock come with the expectation that they will be of high quality and Rear Window fully lives up to this expectation. Rear Window is a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller movie. Hitchcock perfectly blends together a mixture of mystery, suspense, and sexual attraction.
The main character can see into multiple apartments from his position, and every one of those apartments has occupants that show different places in life. There is a newlywed couple, a bachelor who drinks, an attractive young single woman, a content single woman, a lonely single woman, an average married couple, and a married couple who fights. All of these apartments represent different groups of people. Hitchcock tells this whole story without ever leaving the small courtyard between the apartments. The only glimpse of the outside world that the audience sees is through a narrow alleyway that shows normal life going on outside of the courtyard.
Hitchcock takes the viewers along on a ride with the main character. The audience is given small bits of information as the main character discovers them. This slow building of knowledge allows the audience to piece together what has happened for themselves.
From the first interaction of two characters, there is a hint that something bad will happen. The first lines from Jeff's nurse is a warning that he will get into trouble if he keeps looking in other peoples windows. The audience is left to question what they have seen, what they think they have seen, their doubts about the crime, and what all of these add up to. Viewers are lead to believe the same things as the main character, Jeff, assumes based off what he sees. Once the main character's girlfriend, Lisa, gets involved what she says and does suggest to the viewer that maybe Jeff is wrong, maybe he has gone stir crazy from sitting in his wheelchair from weeks. Jeff's nurse and girlfriend doubt his observations and lead the audience to question his thinking too.
Much of the interactions between the neighbors is just visual, leaving some ambiguity as to what is actually going on. The audience only hears murmurs and partial sentences coming from the other apartments and must rely on visual cues to know what is taking place in the apartment. This type of acting is part of Hitchcock's style, he once said, "If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on". Non-verbal acting is very well used in the moment when the main character's girlfriend finally believes that a murder has been committed. Without saying a word she looks past Jeff and out the window with a look of horror on her face.
Hitchcock also mixes in a sub-story of the relationship between Jeff and Lisa within the main story of proving that Mr. Thorwald killed his wife. This mixing of the two stories helps to fill some of the less eventful moments by revealing more about their relationship. Showing the audience more about the relationship the two share also gives more depth to the conversations between Jeff and Lisa.
My one disappointment, though it is a small one, is the ending of this film. Hitchcock does an enchanting job of creating immense suspense building up to the confrontation between the main character and the killer and pulls the viewer right in. The suspense is broken with the main character being forced out the window and is partially caught in a very dramatic grand finale. What is disappointing is the almost immediate wrap up of the murder case. Once caught the killer does not put up a fight and he confesses to where the body is hidden and what the dog was searching for under the flowers. Though the main focus of this film is not the logistics side of police work to convict the criminal, it would have been nice to have that part played out a bit more. The immediate confession of our killer gives a feeling of rushing and quick script writing that takes away from the otherwise enthralling film.