Review of Rear Window.
I first saw Alfred Hitchcock's famous Rear Window at home during the 8:30pm timeslot on the cable network's Fox Classics Channel. I was sitting near the floor to ceiling glass sliding doors of my apartment, which led to the veranda. From there, like every other night, I could hear laughter, arguments, someone's radio on too loud or a child's piano playing. Bill Collins presented his Golden Years of Hollywood segment, which regularly starts before the 8:30pm film. Despite Rear Window being only the Hitchcock film I had seen, after Marnie, I thought I knew what to expect.
The first characters we are introduced to are the tenants living in the block of apartments of Greenwich Village. Though they remain nameless except for labels such as "Miss Torso" and "Miss Lonely-hearts", these are people we recognise as part of our own lives. Then, there is L.B
English: Studio publicity photo of Alfred Hitchcoc...
Cropped screenshot from the trailer for the film R...
Cropped screenshot of James Stewart from the trail...Jeffries, played by James Stewart. He is the main character of Rear Window, a photographer who has broken his leg and has been confined to his apartment for several weeks. There is Stella, Thelma Ritter, the insurance nurse and Grace Kelly, who plays the perfect Lisa Freemont, who wants to marry Jeffries but he keeps her at a distant. She enters the story with her shadow slowly covering his face, and introduces herself in a fashionable new dress from Paris.
Jeffries is a voyeur, spying on his neighbours as "innocent fun" until he notices some suspicious activity in the Thorwalds apartment, that Mrs Thorwald has been murdered. At first there is the usual quarrel, then Mrs Thorwald is gone even though she previously appeared to be confined in her bed. Later, he notices Mr Thorwald leaving his apartment early in the morning, in the rain, and handling knives and...