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Rear Window

Cast: James Jeff (L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries), Grace Kelly (Lisa Carol Fremont), Wendell Corey (Detective Thomas J. Doyle), Thelma Ritter (Stella), Raymond Burr (Lars Thorwald)

James Stewart stars in Rear Window, a taut chiller from Alfred Hitchcock about a wheelchair-bound victim who is desperately trying to solve a murder no one seems to believe happened. Filled with suspense and excitement, this film is a superb example of how to make a film on one set and still make the viewer feel free of claustrophobia and totally engrossed.

Click here for the introductory slideshow

Scenes for study (require RealPlayer, available as a free download from www.real.com):

• Opening: Jeff's Apartment
• note how in each of the following scenes, Jeff's perspective is subtly altered:
  • Jeff's perspective established
  • Jeff's perspective expanded
  • Jeff's perspective enhanced
  • Jeff's perspective exposed

Photographer confined. James Stewart, one of the director's favorite leading players, is simply terrific 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.

Murder suspected. Jeff, to while away the time, takes more and more interest in Thorwald, 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 Thorwald 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 Thorwald's bedroom are drawn and Thorwald's wife is nowhere to be seen. Jeff alerts Lisa and Stella to the situation, and when he observes Thorwald 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.

Story disbelieved. Jeff calls his old friend Wendell Lt. Doyle, a laconic plainclothes cop who patiently hears out Jeff and Lisa's story, then pooh-poohs the whole possibility that salesman Thorwald has murdered and then hacked up his wife. To placate Jeff, Lt. 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 Thorwald has indeed killed his wife, especially after Lisa boldly gets in and out of Thorwald's apartment to find some incriminating evidence—his wife's wedding ring and some jewelry, items no woman would merely discard when leaving a husband. As evidence and suspicions mount, so too does the danger.

Expert cast. Of all Hitchcock films, Rear Window is an exercise in grand voyeurism; whereas the sneaky Peeping Tomism practiced by Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960) is perverse, Jeff'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. Jeff is exactly right for the role of this meddling photographer, expressing a rather worldly view of life tinged with the annoyance of being cooped up with a bad leg. Kelly is radiant and restrained but lavishes in little ways her love for Jeff, 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 Jeff are actually disappointed that Thorwald 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."

Brilliant tension. 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 a composer (Ross Bagdasarian) have a smash hit, then a failure, and then enjoy a rediscovery. Also observed is an apprentice ballerina (Georgine Darcy) running through a bevy of suitors, ultimately preferring the returning serviceman over the tuxedoed rich men.

Authentic detail. 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 nighttime 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 Lifeboat (1944), 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."

Well-considered characters. 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 Stella condemn Jeff'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."

Jeff's relationship to the picture's audience is also reinforced by his character's action. The film's suspense is captured quickly when Jeff resolves to become an investigator with his camera, turning off lights and shrinking back into the shadows to seriously study Thorwald with his telephoto lens. After all, Jeff's own windows are wide open and he too can be seen. The suspense heightens when the viewer and Jeff see Kelly searching the bedroom inside Thorwald'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 Jeff, 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.

A pleased Hitchcock. 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.

Subsequent rereleases. 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."

Links

• from a recent USA Today: Hitchcock's 100th scares up tributes, with links to each of the following...
  • www.baylor.edu/~Hitchcock/Hitch.html "The Hitchcock Centennial" site, devoted to events for Hitch's 100th birthday.
  • www.moma.org/filmvideo/hitchcock Details about New York's Museum of Modern Art's Alfred Hitchcock exhibition, with information on Hitchcock's career from the 1920s to '70s, film stills, and a Hitchcock interview and lecture.
  • www.interlog.com/~couke/index.html Lives up to its billing as "The Definitive Alfred Hitchcock Links Page" with 119.
  • www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin The MacGuffin Web site is where film scholars go to discuss Hitchcock's work.
  • members.aol.com/vistavsion/index.html This "Hitchcock and his Writers" site examines the work of the many talented (and often neglected) screenwriters who worked with Hitch.

Questions for discussion:

1. In Letter from an Unknown Woman, we considered the problems of adapting first-person point-of-view from literary fiction to the cinematic narrative.  What techniques does Hitchcock use to address the problem of first-person point-of-view?   How is his response similar to, or different from, Max Ophüls's in Letter from an Unknown Woman?
2. While "It Had to Be Murder" is regarded most charitably as a minor noir story, Rear Window has been generally regarded as a classic of the American cinema. Why is that? Aside from the obvious appeal of its stars and style of its director, what accounts for Rear Window's comparative success as a work of art?
3. What specific thematic meanings does Hitchcock's interpretation of the story provide that Woolrich's "It Had to Be Murder" does not?  How are those meanings suggested?  Are there any such meanings that Woolrich's story provides that Hitchcock's film does not?
4. Hitchcock has said that his "first instincts are to go with the visual and not follow the words."  To what degree is this claim supported by Rear Window, and to what effect?  What methods does Hitchcock find of providing (and deferring) exposition, of developing complications, and of resolving conflicts?
5. Describe as precisely as you can the relationship between Jeff and Lisa, both "prior to" the time of the film itself and during it.  How is each of them characterized, and by what methods?  When is it--exactly--that Lisa finally becomes of interest to Jeff?  What is it that motivates his interest?
6. In what ways does the exposition provided us about Jeff's career guide our analysis and evaluation of what he sees and imagines?