A whole other world just outside the windows

One of the greatest things about Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is that it manages to keep its plot at a minimum. The film is so beautifully simple that I was quite surprised how much I really liked the film. Rear Window does not try to constantly scare the audience with mindless tidbits, but it is a psychological thriller that places us in the same shoes as the protagonist. The protagonist, Jefferies (James Stewart) is one of the best movie characters I have ever seen on screen because he is so normal and you can easily believe that he probably is your neighbor indeed – and this is the character that Stewart portrays best.

Rear Window contains one of the simplest stories in film. Jefferies, a photographer confined to a wheel chair takes some interest in spying on his neighbors. He sees a quarreling couple across the building and one day, the wife disappears. Jefferies quickly suspects it is murder, after witnessing the husband’s midnight trips and saws and knives. Jefferies convinces his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly) that the husband, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), did kill his wife after she begins to find Jefferies obsessed with watching his neighbors.

Jefferies contacts a detective friend (Wendell Corey) who does not believe Jefferies or Lisa’s intuitions about women, but he tries to give Jefferies some assistance whenever he can. He also gets his nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter) involved into the mystery.

The characters are not shown as complicated people even though they manage to have complex problems. Jefferies is afraid to marry his beautiful girlfriend because he is afraid that she would take away a job that he really likes and she will unable to follow him. Lisa would rather him stay at home to take pictures for fashion magazines, but tells Jefferies that she is capable of going with him into the wild for his job.

Hitchcock really does have a sense of humor to keep the audience alive during his more serious moments. The comedy is shown through the dialogue by the characters. Even though the character of Stella is a supporting role, she seems like a main part of the film by delivering some well-needed chuckles.

The first part of Rear Window is quite slow, as we see Jefferies looking through his windows. Slowly, even we as the audience turn into Jefferies, being quite interested in the ballerina across the street, the woman who just can’t seem to get into a relationship, or even the pianist who plays the same tune.

The acting in Rear Window is not amazing, but there is something about Stewart that makes him suitable for this part. Stewart possesses an unavoidable charisma to all his characters that makes modern audiences think that he is definitely the Tom Hanks of the 50’s – and should I add that he is a better actor as well? There is also Grace Kelly as Lisa, and she is wonderful as well and even though Stewart and Kelly as a couple seemed somewhat strange, the two has surprisingly good chemistry. Corey, Ritter and Burr all contribute the film – in humor or in thrills, they all seem like the actors the film couldn’t have lived without.

In Rear Window, the cinematography is very effective to the storytelling of the film because every shot is part of the story. There are rarely films today that have the same simplicity of Rear Window and even with their complicated plots they don’t seem to achieve the merit of Rear Window. I really enjoyed the film, and it has inspired me to watch more Hitchcock films, and everyone else should do the same as well.