Rear Window is easily amongst my top 3 Hitchcock movies (not as good as North By Northwest, slightly better than Psycho, but they’re all 10/10). It tells the story of a photojournalist with a broken leg, who has been holed up in his small apartment for six weeks with nothing but spying on his neighbours to keep him company, one of whom he begins to suspect may have murdered his wife, but there’s so much more to it than that. Here’s some reasons why I love it:
5. Jeff and Lisa: The relationship between L. B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) and Lisa Carol Freemont (Grace Kelly) is probably my favorite male/female dynamic amongst Hitchcock’s work. Jeff is a photojournalist, who spends a considerable portion of his time away from home, travelling the world in pursuit of his next picture. He is not keen on abandoning this free-wheeling lifestyle and strapping himself down to married life. Lisa, on the other hand, is a fashion model, and a renowned one at that (…because she looks like Grace Kelly) and she’d like nothing more than to be wed to, and settle down with, the man she loves, who just happens at this moment in time to be stuck temporarily in a wheelchair, so currently cannot get away. Once I get over the incredulity required to understand quite how a man wouldn’t want to settle down with a wealthy, witty, socially upstanding Grace Kelly, I really love the relationship between the two characters, and how Jeff sees it mirrored everywhere he looks (more on this later). They have terrific chemistry (ably supported by the banter-laden back and forth dialogue), and it’s the arc of this relationship that provides the backbone for the rest of the film, with Jeff slowly realising that the woman he loves may in fact also be the woman he wants to be with.
4. Grace Kelly: Did I mention I love Grace Kelly? I did? Huh. Well, that’s not going to stop me carrying on. Alfred Hitchcock never hid the fact that Grace Kelly was, to him, the epitome of leading ladies. She had everything he wanted – beauty, grace, talent, wit, and of course she was blonde. She is good in To Catch A Thief and great in Dial M For Murder, but Rear Window is where she particularly shines – literally, at times, given the glow that occasionally seems to emanate from her. Kelly’s introduction here, appearing before Jeff as he wakes from sleep, slowly shimmering towards him like a mirage in a desert, is just perfect. Who knows what would have become her relationship with Hitchcock if only she hadn’t become a princess?
3. The Fluid Storytelling: The story in Rear Window is quite straightforward; [Spoiler warning] Jeff sees a quarrel between his directly-opposite neighbours the Thorwalds and, later that night, Mr. Throwald (Raymond Burr) is spotted leaving his home in the middle of the night carrying a large briefcase, only to return and head out again twice more throughout the night. The next day, the usually bedridden Mrs. Thorwald is nowhere to be seen, and her husband is packing up all her belongings. Understandably, Jeff is suspicious. What I love about the plot here is how it is told. We see almost everything from the point of view of Jeff and his apartment. The only time we ever leave the place is right at the end, when he does, so everything we see is almost literally from Jeff’s perspective. When he finds out a clue, so do we. And the way in which each of the clues is discovered is executed perfectly. The argument between the Thorwalds is only noticed by Jeff as he describes married life to a friend of his, how he doesn’t want to come home to a nagging wife every day – it’s also interesting in this moment that Jeff is seeing Thorwald as someone he could potentially become, if his situation allowed. This could be extrapolated further to mean Jeff, in his current state of mind, doesn’t want to marry Lisa for fear of eventually getting so sick of her he’d kill her. I may be reading too far into this. Anyway, later Jeff only wakes up to see Thorwald’s interesting nocturnal behaviour because a sudden downpour has woken his neighbours asleep on their balcony. Most of Jeff’s voyeurism is accomplished with his binoculars and extra long camera lens, both of which would be integral to a photographer, and even Jeff’s final confrontation with Thorwald sees the former attempting to fend off his attacker with flash bulbs, which were only grabbed and close to hand as a means of signalling to Lisa – who had been snooping around in Thorwald’s apartment – when she should exit. Thorwald only discovers Jeff knows anything because he sees Lisa signalling across the courtyard to him, and Jeff only phones the police because he happened to be on the line to them to assist another of his neighbours. Pretty much every detail in the film has been carefully calculated and positioned so as not to feel forced or staged in any way, and it all works perfectly.
2. The Neighbours: There’s a lot going on in Rear Window. All the apartments surrounding Jeff’s have people living in them, all living their own lives, and we get to witness a lot of what’s going on, so much so that many of these people have fully developed character arcs throughout the film. There’s Miss Torso, the nubile ballet dancer fending off her many suitors whilst she incessantly practices her routines in her underwear – much to the delight of Jeff and his friend Doyle. There’s the newlyweds that have just moved in next door, whose first few days behind drawn blinds soon lead to financial woes and the stresses of married life. Miss Lonelyhearts is an older woman desperately seeking love, whose story takes an unexpectedly depressing turn of attempted rape leading to potential suicide, and finally there’s the composer on Jeff’s other side, struggling to finish his latest creation. And that’s not even mentioning the more ancillary neighbours, such as the couple with the dog in a basket, or the sculptor on the ground floor. These neighbours provide a hive of background activity, and also take the place of the score, which is entirely natural too. Of course, it helps to have some musical people amongst them – an entire act is scored by the composer playing piano during a party, and there’s a great deal of whistling throughout too. Few of these neighbours have much discernible dialogue, and none of them have a definitive name other than the Thorwalds, yet by the end of the film we know almost everything about most of them. It seems like this is the same for Jeff too. Before he was restricted to the inside of his flat, I got the feeling he was rarely in the place, simply using it as somewhere for his mail to be delivered and an occasional bed to sleep in when the need arose. His neighbours were nothing to him before – he may have not even realised he had any – but now they’ve taken over everything he thinks about, and without them he’d be lost.
1. The Set: Almost unbelievably, Rear Window was shot entirely on a set. The buildings, courtyard and even the distant road past the alleyway were all created in one giant location, but even more unbelievable is that initially, the set wasn’t high enough to accommodate all the storeys Hitchcock wanted. This meant only one thing, they had to dig. Jeff’s first floor apartment is actually on the ground floor of Paramount studios, with the flower garden and Miss Lonelyhearts’ flat being in the basement. In order to recreate the glaring sunlight – the film takes place during a stifling summer – a great number of lights were required, which meant the temperature on set was potentially even greater than the summer attempting to be created. The technical achievement of creating and working within this set never fail to astound me, and I love the design of it too. The way Jeff can see into Thorwald’s apartment, as well as down the hallway leading up to his front door is brilliant, allowing for some great tension late in the film. Even the fact that Jeff has steps leading down from his front door into his room plays into the story – it explains why his front door isn’t locked, as how would he be able to let anyone in from his wheelchair? Rear Window is one of those rare examples of what I deem to be a perfect film. It doesn’t put a foot wrong in any direction. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favour and check it out.
Are you a fan of Rear Window? You better be. What do you love about it? Let us know in the comments.
