Hitchcock�s technical experiment in constructing an elaborate neighbourhood set but filming solely from one apartment becomes a classic work of suspense due to a crackling script and a host of top notch performances, especially from the dependable Jimmy Stewart (awesomely natural in speech and mannerism) and Grace Kelly (just plain hot; oh and she can act too).
Stewart plays L.B. Jeffries, a magazine photographer who�s attempt to capture the excitement of motor-racing has put his leg in a cast and confined him to a wheelchair for 6 weeks. Housebound and terminally bored, he sits in his apartment and spies on his neighbours, discovering he has a veritable soap opera in his own backyard. Meanwhile his high society girlfriend is putting pressure on him to show a bit more commitment and is threatening to leave him otherwise.
Unfortunately, the stick he uses to scratch his leg can do nothing about the growing itch in his mind � what has become of the nagging wife in the opposite apartment, and why is her husband acting so strangely? He gradually becomes obsessed that it is murder and even convinces his nurse, girlfriend and skeptical police friend that something is amiss.
What is so clever about Rear Window is how like Stewart the audience is. We have the same desire to find the truth and are as riveted to the screen as he is to his binoculars. How easily the other characters become voyeurs shows how everyone has more than their fair share of curiosity and restricting the camera to the one room means we are as limited in knowledge as Stewart and have none of the relief of dramatic irony that we crave.
The ending is Hitchcock using all his guile to keep the viewer in suspense and rewards us for our prior patience with a race against time to try and prove that their hunch is right, something you are never sure of until the very end. It�s a joy to be kept on tenterhooks by such a master as Hitch. |
