Rear Window (1954)Alfred Hitchcock and the Suspense of the Helpless

Mar 22, 2008 Edward Montgomery

In Alfred Hitchcock's famous thriller, L.B. Jefferies finds more than he bargained for when he begins to watch his neighbor's lives from his apartment window.

The SetupThe plot is simple – your leg is broken, an unfortunate position to be in for an action photographer, and you’ve spent the last six weeks staring out the windows of your apartment and watching the lives of all those below you. At first it was a passing fancy, but then you slowly become involved in all those lives that weren’t yours, the slips of privacy you secretly watched. In today’s world, this is called reality television, but in 1954 it was the premise for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), called “Jeff” by his friends, is the man who has fallen into the easy routine of a voyeur who prefers to view and criticize the world from his window, a questionable pastime, but seemingly without consequence until he observes scenes of marital tension, hears a scream in the night, and then finds his neighbor’s wife is suddenly can no longer be found.

Balance in the Wake of FearWhile the careful architecture of Hitchcock’s suspense is the highpoint of the film, one of the unappreciated merits is its ability to mix of humor and compassion into a thriller. In our era of the single-genre movie, Rear Window provides laughable moments in the middle of suspense, as well as the subplot of Jeff’s problems with his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly) and her own issues with being in love with a man more concerned with peering out his window than peering at the gorgeous woman in his room. When she becomes involved in Jeff’s amateur investigation (along with his masseuse Stella, played by Thelma Ritter), it now becomes an impromptu team’s effort to discover the evidence proving foul-play and brings all the snappy one-liners of the 1950’s with it:

Jefferies: Why does a man leave his house three times on a rainy night and comes back three times?

Ads by GoogleAustralia The Movie DVD Buy Australia Movie DVD Only $34.98 - Buy Online Today! MyShopToday.com.au/Australia-DVDGet Into Film & TV Be a Professional Film & TV Stylist Diploma Course by Correspondence AustCollegeProfessionalStyling.comLisa: Maybe he likes the way his wife welcomes him home.

As with many of Hitchcock’s films, when the mystery of the plot becomes intertwined with the action of Jeff and Lisa’s relationship, sparks fly, and one of the best scenes in the movies comes when Jeff’s true feelings for Lisa leap onto his face in the midst of their covert operations.

The Question of Paranoia and PerspectiveWith his troubled love life and fondness for watching, but not participating, Jeff is a contemporary of Ivan from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in that while he ponders briefly the ethics of scrutinizing these lives from his window, he ultimately invests himself in the problems of others at the sacrifice of his own. This is where Hitchcock’s brilliance shines: first presenting Jeff’s unique and dangerous perspective, and then lulling the audience into accepting it as only natural.

Read on Top 5 Alfred Hitchcock Films

The Erotic look: Marilyn Monroe Vs Grace KellyNew DVD Releases for OctoberMost of the film the camera peers over the corner of Jeff’s shoulder into the courtyard or through his telephoto lens or binoculars, and before long the conclusions that Jeff comes to about murder and deception seem to be only natural to all those who watch alongside him. When Jeff’s detective friend Doyle (Wendell Corey) tries to dispute the chain of events and suggest that Jeff has whipped himself into a state of paranoia, the audience simultaneously scoffs and wonders if they aren’t crazy for considering such possibilities.

By the end, this mix of fear and confusion creates the one of the best nail-biting scenes in all of cinema as a killer slowly climbs the stairs to no longer Jeff’s apartment, but our apartment, and both the audience and Jeff can only sit helplessly and wait for the door to open.

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