Rear Window

A luminous high point in the careers of its director and two stars, Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a suspense thriller, a romance, and an extended, cautionary mediation on voyeurism and cinema, all rolled into one extraordinary and inexhaustible whole. One of Hitchcock’s major masterpieces, it is also the best of those quirky experiments (the likes of Lifeboat and Rope) in which he set himself an intriguing technical challenge: in this case, the attempt to make a film from the viewpoint of a single character, on the confines of a single set. And what a set! Jimmy Stewart plays a news photographer immobilized by a broken leg who spends his convalescence spying on the all neighbours across the courtyard in his Greenwich Village apartment complex. Grace Kelly is his glamorous, attentive girlfriend, a fashion editor he resists marrying. The little domestic dramas these two observe across the way unfold like mini-movies; the peeping-tom action really heats up when they begin to suspect that one of the neighbours has murdered his wife. Hitchcock transforms the physical restrictions of the production into one of his most marvellously cinematic (and most self-revelatory) works. Kelly’s amazing clothes are reason enough to see this unforgettable film. Colour, 35mm. 112 mins.