Terrible Ending

Rating: 1/10 (25 February 2014)

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one disappointed by the ending.
If this movie had ended with L. B. Jefferies realizing that Lars Thorwald was innocent, it would have been great. But no, it turns out that Thorwald actually did kill his wife. If ever there was a movie that needed a twist ending, it was Rear Window.
And I'll admit that I thought the camera never leaving the room seemed gimmicky. And didn't people use blinds in New York in the 1950s? And if Jefferies has no problem seeing his neighbors, why doesn't any one of them see him, especially with that huge camera lens he's holding. (Well, Thorwald sees him in the end, but why did it take him that long? Jefferies had his camera lens pointed at his room for more than half the movie.)
And even after I accepted the fact that the twist ending I had hoped for wasn't going to happen, I couldn't get past how stupid the climax was. Really? The villain is stopped by camera flashbulbs? That's something I'd expect to work only in a cartoon.
I've seen two other Hitchcock movies and I didn't like them either. Vertigo was just boring. The villain in that movie just came up with the most convoluted plan to get rid of his wife. And North by Northwest wasn't that great either. Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger (the first three James Bond movies) were all more exciting and all of them had a lower budget than North by Northwest. But Rear Window is definitely the worst of the three.