Film review of Rear Window ...by Tim Francis

FILM  REVIEW  for…..REAR  WINDOW



Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 Rear Window is a voyeuristic film acquiring four Academy Award nominations. This suspense laden movie develops easily from beginning to end. The storyline is about a wheelchair bound photographer who spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and becomes convinced  that a murder has been committed by one of the tenants.

The film was shot entirely at paramount studios which included a gigantic set on one of the soundstages. Hitchcock carefully uses diegetic natural sounds and the drifting of music across the courtyard between apartments. Shot entirely in Technicolor and using Edith Head for costume designer ,as he did on all Paramount pictures.

One of the characters in the film, Stella(Thelma Ritter) comments to Jeff  (James Stewart)”We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms “…this equates equally to the cinema as to real life. Stella signifies the specifically sexual pleasures of looking that is aligned with classical Hollywood depictions. Most of the film is seen through Jeff’s visual aspect and his thought processes and perspective. Hitchcock implicates us all as spectators as we view through the rear window, along with Jeff, to draw us in as Peeping Toms. We are watching him and the people he watches.

 The elegant Lisa (Grace Kelly)  causes Jeff’s passive attitude to romance to change when she metaphorically crosses over from the spectator side. The feminist approach in interpreting Freud within the cinema allude that women spectators of this film (and others) become ‘masculinised’. Poignantly, when Jeff is pushed through the window(the screen), he has been forced to become part of the show.

The way that  one of the character’s composed music in the film is heard gradually and eventually in full at the end ,is climatically brilliant.

The subsequent movies released paying homage to Rear Window :- Body Double(84)… Clubhouse Detectives(96)… What Lies Beneath (2000)…Head Over Heels(2001)…Disturbia(2007) ....and Rear Window remake in 1998  are testament to the power of  Alfred Hitchcock in being the master of suspense on the silver screen.



 A FILM REVIEW OF ..REAR WINDOW… by Tim Francis April 2011