Unreasonably Happy

Rating: 8/10 (8 December 2008)

How many stories end with a man falling in love without even leaving his apartment? Not many, the tale is heartwarming and Grace Kelley is well, warming in general. To see the thesis of the dog-lady so rapidly denied the only set back for the optimist is that it took a murder to accomplish it. A small price to pay for an audience. For a critic it's a great one.
Hitchcock is always about how the movie is shot anyway, who should worry about the witty James Stewart dialogue or even Grace Kelley's warmth when it's completely overshadowed by genius camera work and a stunning set, described so beautifully that one audience member may even feel as though they are familiar with an area similar to it if they chanced upon it in real life.
Is that the point, that this goes on everywhere? That, like as in Network we are too tightly wrapped up in our own redundant affairs to even give our neighbors a glance? Well the character who would most like to escape from monotony or commitment to marriage or just everyday life cannot. In fact it drives him crazy and watching Stewart suffer and slowly succumb to the everyday miserable lives of his neighbors is something to behold.
Didn't Hitchcock say that the best thing you can do is "make the audience suffer as much as possible"? He sure as hell hits the spot here. Stewart's seemingly inevitable demise is only trumped by the male audience's (and female's) desire for him to shape up and finally give in to Kelley and fall in love.
But in the end it's a love story, like all stories, and Stewart is content to be with a newly found old love, and she loves him like a good woman. Sometimes you wish brilliant men had been born in different centuries, sometimes different decades. The movie thrills and chills all the way up to the end...