L.B “Jeff” Jeffries is a successful photojournalist who is sidelined with a broken leg. Confined to a wheelchair all day, Jeff has nothing better to do than spy on his neighbours through his rear window. It begins as a harmless pastime, watching the love lives of his neighbours, but it soon turns into an obsession when he begins to watch the suspicious actions of a particular neighbour and he becomes convinced that this man has murdered his wife.
This is another thrilling classic from Alfred Hitchcock filled with murder, suspicion, close encounters, and foul play. It’s really clever and utterly brilliant!
L.B “Jeff” Jeffries is a successful photojournalist who is sidelined with a broken leg. Confined to a wheelchair all day, Jeff has nothing better to do than to spy on his neighbours through his rear window. A little more interested in the love lives of his neighbours rather than his own fashion model girlfriend and would-be wife, Jeff’s sees his spying as a harmless pastime. But this “pastime” quickly turns into an obsession as he begins to notice that one of his neighbours is acting rather suspiciously and he soon convinces himself that this man has murdered his wife. Convincing his girlfriend Lisa and his caretaker, Stella, that this man has committed foul play, the obsession soon escalates into an investigation, one that will take a sinister turn that none of them could have foreseen.
As I said before, this is another thrilling film from the psychotic genius, Alfred Hitchcock. But what’s really brilliant about this movie is the response that it gains from the audience. The film itself isn’t really spooky or spine-tinglingly haunting like Vertigo or Psycho, what made it so great was that it attacked a very interesting human instinct. Basically, all that the film was, was a situation. As Jeff suddenly becomes a detective, so too does the audience, and we make it our mission to come to the conclusion before Jeff does. I found myself falling victim to this in this film. I found myself saying “I reckon Jeff’s wrong and there is a logical explanation, but there has been a murder and it’s someone you’re not going to suspect.”
Hitchcock attacks a very primal instinct where we come to the most brutal and hasty conclusions and we get ourselves into a fret over nothing. The movie is one big game of Clue and, although it concludes on a high note with a bit of a disappointing and final ending, it’s the figuring out the case that causes all the excitement and flips in the stomach. Without a doubt, Alfred Hitchcock is one of the cleverest filmmakers in cinematic history!
James Stewart stars as Jeff and he was great. In all honesty, I felt he was just playing James Stewart in a wheelchair, but he delivered a performance that was obsessive, unwaveringly certain, and his obsessive behaviour kept me completely enthralled.
Grace Kelly stars as Lisa and she is just too beautiful. She was prim, perfect, playful, and completely charming. A delight to watch on screen.
Starring Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, Judith Evelyn, Ross Bagdasarian, Georgine Darcy, Sara Berner, Frank Cady, Jesslyn Fax, Rand Harper, Irene Winston, and Havis Davenport, Rear Window was a fantastically clever film that simply relied on primal human instinct to create the thrills. Filled with suspicion, murder, obsession, romance, spying, and foul play, it was an absolutely brilliant film that I really enjoyed.
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