In 1954 Alfred Hitchcock released his greatest film which fully illustrated his subtle directorial abilities, Rear Window. The film tells the story of L.B Jefferies, played by James Stewart, a photographer laid up with a broken leg on the hottest week in New York. Being a professional photographer and having nothing else to do, he takes up looking through his window into the other open rear windows of his apartment complex where across the way he suspects foul play.
Much like the novelist Charles Dickens, for a long while Hitchcock’s work was not as well received by critics as it was by his audience, mostly for the sensationalist and rather genre-based storytelling that he employed. But like Dickens, Hitchcock’s work is both high art and entertaining. The themes of Hathcock, like Dickens, are hard to see because they are masked beneath the sensationalism, making for an enriching viewing experience one every subsequent rewatch.
Joining Stewart on the screen is Grace Kelly, Stewarts characters’ girlfriend, and Thelma Ritter, Stewart’s nurse, who help him in his endeavor to find out whether Stewart is just seeing things through the lens of his own boredom, or the terrible truth. All acting is excellent in the film, Grace Kelly being as lovely and mesmerizing in her second Hitchcock film as ever she was in her career, Thelma Ritter as snappy and witty and tough. Of course, the standout performance is Stewart, who has the difficulty of having to act while never taking a single step in the film. Everything he gives he gives with his face and especially his eyes, showing his paranoia and fear wonderfully.
I mustn’t be remiss and fail to talk about the extras that fill in the world of the apartment complex that Stewart lives in. Stewart doesn’t only look at the one apartment that may be the scene of a crime, he also looks at all the surrounding ones, which play their own distinct parts in creating the subtext of the film. There is Miss lonely heart, as Stewarts characters calls her, a middle-aged single woman who lives alone and is desperate for a love connection. There is the pianist, who scores the film throughout as he attempts to create the next great piece. The newlyweds who have just moved in. Miss Torso, a dancer whom Stewart ogles. And finally, there is the middle-aged couple who own a dog with the propensity to dig in the flower bed. What these background characters provide other than filling in space, is pointing out the dangers of voyeurism. Stewart observes these characters from a distance and only from a distance, yet he draws conclusions based on his observations never giving a second thought to whether or not he right or wrong.
Like Stewart in his chair, never taking a step, the camera almost never leaves his apartment. We see through Stewarts rear window into the other windows. In this way, Hitchcock seems to be almost meta in the way, the frame of the window being the frame of our own TV screen or theatre. This film was released in the fifties, during the time of the red scare that was plaguing America where anyone could be a communist and one was encouraged to keep an eye out for any suspicious signs. Reading it through that lens the film makes sense as Stewart literally keeps both eyes wide open. But it can also be viewed in a universal sense. We are all, in our own way, voyeurs. We listen in on conversations we shouldn’t, peer through key holes, read other people’s text messages. And even if we don’t do these things, there is a deep part of us that wants tp. We all have that desire to see what everyone else is doing that they are keeping private. It’s almost a peeping tom complex. Maybe Hitchcock is suggesting that we go to the movies for the same reason. We want to do it, but it is socially reprehensible, so we go to the movies where we are safe to do so because everyone on screen is not actually there.
The film is also notable for having a completely diegetic score, meaning that the music you hear in the film is something that exists within the world as well that the characters hear alongside you. And despite the fact that the music isn’t intentionally suspenseful in the way Bernhard Herman’s scores in Hitchcock’s other films are, the way the score works alongside with the characters actions give it all the appearance of suspense.
Speaking of suspense, this film has got to be the blueprint for suspense in film. Everything flows smoothly, building up tension. It may surprise people, but for the majority of the film there is a distinct lack of suspense. Nothing happens to get the audience’s heartrate up or palms sweating…that is not until the last half hour of the film where all the buildup comes to its head. Hitchcock has never been better than here; not in Notorious, not in Psycho, not in Vertigo, here is where the master of suspense earns his title. Here is what is missing from most modern films, patience. Hitchcock holds the attention of the audience so much that even though not much “action” is going on you don’t feel it, you’re mesmerized and so it almost takes you by surprise when all hell breaks loose. The last half hour of the film can be equivalated to a high speed car chase if you were stuck in the back seat of the one being pursued. you aren’t in control, you are stuck, a deadly air hangs over you.
This film is an all-time classic not just in the suspense genre but in film as a whole. It is well known as a “directors movie” due to influence on how suspense in shown in film and the variety of techniques that inspired filmmakers such as Brian Depalma and Martin Scorsese. It’s a film subtle in its implications, and incredible entertaining so that all audiences can watch and enjoy in more ways than one.