Rear Window (1954)

I have seen Rear Window more times than I am really sure about. I lost count, is what I mean to say. It is easily one of my top ten films of all time, and my personal pick for Best Hitchcock Film Ever (no small feat).

Jimmy Stewart is a successful photo-journalist who has broken a leg in the line of duty (photographing a car crash) who has been in a cast for seven weeks, Grace Kelly is his glamorous (big stretch) girlfriend. As he has been laid up in his apartment for almost two months he has become quite interested in the lives of his neighbors surrounding the courtyard outside his window. Did I mention that there is a heatwave going on? And it’s in NYC (real Do the Right Thing kinda feeling).

We stay with him stuck in the apartment, we see only what he sees, and his stir-crazy vibe and desperation for something interesting to happen is muddied when one of his neighbors begins to behave in very strange ways. His wife disappears, he takes late night trips out of doors, smokes in the dark staring out the window. The brilliance is that at first we are introduced to all the characters in the courtyard and the meat of the plot could follow any of them. They are all up for grabs, and even when we follow the man who possibly killed his wife, we still follow the other neighbors as they continue to go on about their odd little lives.

The case for his neighbor is flimsy and mostly built on paranoia and hunches. Not that you think he’s wrong, its just that none of it would hold up in court, but the brilliance of the movie is that it draws you in and puts you firmly on its side. It’s also a love story, it is a meditation on voyeurism, it is a rethinking (for the time) of what the audience is allowed to know/see. Seriously, the film is about 100 mins of watching a man watch his neighbors out his window, and it rules.

Flawless performances all  around, Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly,  Raymond Burr, and the entire supporting cast. Flawlessly directed, lit, edited. This one is for the books. Referenced by the best: Spike Lee, the Simpsons, Brian DePalma, Roman Polanski, “the ‘burbs”, and on and on. A fucking five star classic.