Rear Window

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 2012)

They say that acting is reacting. If that's the case, then Jimmy Stewart's performance in Rear Window is one of the greatest ever recorded on film. During most of the movie, we are watching him watching the people across the courtyard enclosed by the apartment complex in which he has been cooped up. We literally witness the events of the film through his eyes. Those eyes eventually witness what he believes to have been a murder, but he has a tough time convincing his three confidants: his girlfriend, Lisa Freemont (Grace Kelly), his caregiver, Stella (Thelma Ritter), and his longtime friend, Detective Doyle (Wendell Corey). John Michael Hayes' screenplay is a lesson in misdirection. Not only are we distracted from the central mystery by the lives of the inhabitants of the apartments surrounding the one occupied by the alleged murderer, we become concerned with the challenged relationship between Jeffries (Stewart) and Lisa. Little by little, the focus shifts more and more toward the investigation of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), Jeffries gains more evidence against his suspect, his confidants buy into his theories, and the comforting separator between Jeffries' apartment and that "private world" across the courtyard breaks down, until a moment when Thorwald looks up and peers across the divide, directly into Jeffries' camera-turned-spyglass, evincing genuine chills. Hitchcock couldn't be more in his element, directing a voyeuristic murder mystery about a temporarily disabled photographer, replete with blonde bombshells, macabre innuendo, and sweat-inducing suspense. Rear Window has no shortage of humor, intrigue, and romance, but its signature thrill is one to which all avid moviegoers can relate: the thrill of watching other people, who don't know they are being watched.