Rear Window (1954)

James Stewart, one of the director's favorite leading players, is excellent as magazine photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries, a man of action, who has broken his left leg and is confined to his Greenwich Village apartment. Now he must passively sit back and be content with the mundane day-to-day activities he views from the rear window of his apartment through field glasses and the telescopic lens of his camera. His window looks out on a back court area showing a small garden and the back areas of other apartment buildings. His neighbors are conspicuously unconscious of their own vulnerability to Jeff's constant gaze. Jeff watches housewives, newlyweds (the only persons who actually draw the shades on their rear windows), a composer in a posh apartment, a lonely woman he dubs Miss Lonely Hearts, a Broadway ballerina ("Miss Torso"), and, of particular interest to Jeff, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), who lives with a shrewish wife.

Visiting Jeff is beautiful, cool blonde Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly), who is a high-fashion model desperately in love with him. Jeff is also visited regularly by wise-cracking practical nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), who attends to his needs and scolds him for his Peeping Tom ways.

Jeff, to while away the time, takes more and more interest in Lars, who can be seen walking through the length of his apartment—kitchen, living room, bedroom—arguing with his wife, who suspects him of cheating on her. Unable to sleep the following night, Jeff sees Lars leave his apartment at 2 a.m., carrying his salesman's suitcase. The following day he grows even more suspicious when he sees that the blinds to Lars' bedroom are drawn and Lars' wife is nowhere to be seen. Jeff alerts Lisa and Stella to the situation, and when he observes Lars wrapping a saw and a large carving knife in a newspaper the following evening, he, Lisa, and Stella are now convinced that foul play has been committed.

Jeff calls his old friend Detective Thomas J. Doyle (Wendell Corey), a laconic plainclothes cop who patiently hears out Jeff and Lisa's story, then dismisses the whole possibility that salesman Lars has murdered and then hacked up his wife. To placate Jeff, Detective Doyle promises to look into the man's background and recent activities. He later calls to tell Jeff to mind his own business and leave the solving of crimes to the professionals. Jeff remains convinced, however, that Lars has indeed killed his wife, especially after Lisa boldly gets in and out of Lars' apartment to find some incriminating evidence—his wife's wedding ring and some jewelry, items no woman would merely discard when leaving a husband. Returning to Lars' apartment for more evidence, Lisa, as Jeff can plainly see, is trapped when Lars unexpectedly returns. He calls the police and has them rush to the apartment, where Lisa is arrested for breaking and entering; but she is safe, even though taken off to jail.

By then Lars is on to Jeff, seeing him across the backyard space, and he invades Jeff's apartment a short time later, with Jeff helpless in his wheelchair. At first the photographer attempts to blind the myopic Lars by squeezing off flashbulbs from his camera in the apartment (which Jeff has purposely kept dark), but the man still fumbles forward and he and Jeff struggle, with the heavyset Lars dragging the invalid photographer to the window where he attempts to throw him out. Penalty paid Jeff clings to the ledge while shouting, and the police, led by Detective Doyle, arrive, but seconds too late as Jeff plunges downward two floors. Lars is apprehended and Jeff survives to solidify his relationship with Lisa, but not without paying a penalty for his prying curiosity. In the last frames of the film he is shown still bound to a wheelchair, this time with two broken legs, the right leg having been fractured in the fall.

Of all Alfred Hitchcock films, Rear Window is an exercise in grand voyeurism; whereas the sneaky Peeping Tomism practiced by Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960) is perverse, Stewart's is innocent in that he doesn't spy on people to seek self-stimulation; it's his job as well as his total passion to study and photograph people. James Stewart is exactly right for the role of this meddling photographer, expressing a rather wordly view of life tinged with the annoyance of being cooped up with a bad leg. Grace Kelly is radiant and restrained but lavishes in little ways her love for Stewart, mainly by tending to his creature comforts. She is also wise and witty, something few Hitchcock heroines are ever allowed to be. At one point she realizes that she and Stewart are actually disappointed that Raymond Burr may not have killed his wife, given some new evidence they have formulated, and quips, "I'm not much on rear window ethics, but we're two of the most frightening ghouls I have ever known."

Visually, Rear Window is also a treat, with the brilliant Hitchcock using his character's profession to capture slice-of-life views without disturbing the central tension-filled story. Interspersed between the mounting segments of the remote murder investigation the viewer sees the composer Ross Bagdasarian have a smash hit, then a failure, and then enjoy a rediscovery. Also observed is the apprentice ballerina Georgine Darcy running through a bevy of suitors, ultimately preferring the returning serviceman over the tuxedoed rich men.

Hitchcock, as usual, was concerned with every detail to authenticate his characters, story, and setting. For Rear Window, he personally supervised the construction of 31 full-scale apartments on the biggest set ever constructed at Paramount. "We had 12 of those apartments fully furnished," he later commented. "We could never have gotten them properly lit in a real location." The result is a magnificent city scene of realistic-looking back porches, balconies, and windows, complete with day- and night-time noises mixed with a clever, on-and-off Franz Waxman score. Although confining, the set is nowhere near as limiting as the one Hitchcock was constrained to use in Rope (1948), but it was still a challenge for the director to come up with a real thriller out of a normal backyard setting. He loved such problems, preferring to "box myself in and then figure a way out."

This quality of character also allowed the director to beat the film's critics to the punch. Knowing that he would be accused of shamelessly promoting voyeurism, Hitchcock had the snappy Ritter condemn Stewart's natural (and in his case healthy) curiosity by stating, "We've become a race of Peeping Toms. People ought to get outside and look in at themselves." Stewart's relationship to the picture's audience is also reinforced by his character's action. The film's suspense is captured quickly when Stewart resolves to become an investigator with his camera, turning off lights and shrinking back into the shadows to seriously study Burr with his telephoto lens. After all, Stewart's own windows are wide open and he too can be seen. The suspense heightens when the viewer and Stewart see Kelly searching the bedroom inside Burr's apartment while the culprit is about to enter the apartment and discover the snooping Kelly. The first inclination the viewer has is identical to that of the terrified Stewart, which is to shout, "Hurry up, get out of there! He's coming, hurry, escape, escape!" This is intense visual tension at the high-water mark Hitchcock so consistently hit.

Rear Window was Hitchcock's favorite film next to Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and the great director was very happy with the film's stars. Stewart performed superbly for him in the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Rope (1948), and, later, in Vertigo (1958). Kelly was Hitchcock's kind of icy blonde, with a pudding-soft voice and a truck driver's determination. She became one of his favorite leading ladies and appeared in To Catch a Thief (1955), where Hitchcock would lose her to Prince Rainier of Monaco during shooting on location on the French Riviera. As with most of his female leads, Hitchcock selected every gown and the shoes Kelly wore in Rear Window, telling costumer Edith Head exactly what color would work best in each scene. He even studied the actress's bustline and told Head to put "falsies" into Kelly's dress. Head and Kelly retired to the dressing room, where Kelly refused to have her bosom padded. She adjusted her dress somewhat "and stood as straight as possible, without falsies," Head later reported. When Kelly emerged, having done little to enlarge the appearance of her breasts but standing erect and jutting herself forward slightly, Hitchcock beamed and said, "See what a difference they make."

Rear Window, as well as Rope, The Trouble with Harry (1955), and Vertigo, was taken out of distribution because of Hitchcock's proprietorship and studio squabbling but was rereleased in 1968. (Another rerelease took place in 1983, three years after the director's death.) The ad campaign that accompanied the 1968 rerelease of Rear Window was actually written by Hitchcock and reflected his dark humor. One blurb ran, "Rear Window is such a frightening picture that one should never see it unless accompanied by an audience." (This in the days before cassette viewing.) Another read, "If you do not experience delicious terror when you see Rear Window, then pinch yourself—you are most probably dead."

Cast:

Performer, Character

James Stewart, L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries

Grace Kelly, Lisa Carol Fremont

Wendell Corey, Detective Thomas J. Doyle

Thelma Ritter, Stella

Raymond Burr, Lars Thorwald

Judith Evelyn, Miss Lonely Hearts

Ross Bagdasarian, Songwriter

Georgine Darcy, Miss Torso

Sara Berner, Woman on Fire Escape

Frank Cady, Fire Escape Man

Jesslyn Fax, Miss Hearing Aid

Rand Harper, Honeymooner

Irene Winston, Mrs. Thorwald

Havis Davenport, Newlywed

Production Credits:

Producer, Alfred Hitchcock

Director, Alfred Hitchcock

Screenwriter, John Michael Hayes (based on the story "It Had to Be Murder" by Cornell Woolrich)

Editor, George Tomasini

Cinematographer, Robert Burks

Composer, Franz Waxman

Set Designer Sam Comer and Ray Moyer