Rear Window (1954) (Movie Review)

Title: Rear Window

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenwriter(s): John Michael Hayes

Producer: Alfred Hitchcock

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

In Theaters: August 1^st, 1954

Run Time: 112 minutes

Color: Technicolor

Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter & Raymond Burr

Genre(s): mystery/romance/thriller

Storyline: Professional photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race. Confined to his New York apartment, he spends his time looking out of the rear window observing the neighbors. He begins to suspect that a man across the courtyard may have murdered his wife. Jeff enlists the help of his high society fashion-consultant girlfriend Lisa Freemont and his visiting nurse Stella to investigate.


Movie Trailer:


My Review: This time I traveled to another borough to see this movie. I went to BAM! and it was a gorgeous theater, on the outside. The actual theater was small and intimate but I actually prefer it that way because you feel that much closer to the screen without sitting in the first few rows (which I also prefer to do).

This movie is a part of a series of Grace Kelly movies BAM! is showing from July 13^th – July 26^th. Of the movies they have elected to show this one is the only one they showed over a 6 day span. To me, that speaks volumes.

Hitchcock loved his blondes, Grace Kelly especially. She starred in several of his movies, including Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief. The latter is being shown (and I will be attending) at BAM! as well this coming week.

For this movie however, I feel like Stella, played by Thelma Ritter stole the movie. She has the best one liners and delivers them with such grace and style it’s hard not to easily understand the generation she hales from and agree with her. She is a walking, talking, fortune cookie, or as L.B. Jeffrey’s points out, Readers Digest.

While some might watch this movie and be fearful of their neighbors and probably more attentive as to their surroundings, I feel the opposite. The whole atmosphere of seeing so many different worlds just by gazing out your window. How was L.B. supposed to know a murder would be taking place?

As usual in most of his films, Hitchcock makes a cameo appearance in the movie. If you don’t want to know where, skip this paragraph now, but if you do, read on. The piano player who owns the studio apartment across the way from L.B.’s window, at one point, has a visitor. At first the man’s back is facing the camera but if you know Hitchcock you know more than just the silhouette of his face. Once he turns you can see it is indeed him. I imagine he is a prospective manager or record producer who is visiting the single bachelor to hear him play a piece he has been struggling throughout the movie to finish.

I won’t spoil the movie’s ending but I will point out the way in which the camera angles are used in this movie. Hitchcock was one of the first directors to experiment with camera movements and placement more than anyone else. There is no angle used today that Hitchcock hadn’t tried in one of his movies at least once. This movie is no exception.

Until Hitchcock came along I imagine there was no clear definition for the word suspense. Hence why he is the master of it.

My Rating: A