|
| Rating: |
   
|
| Run Time: |
112 min |
| MPAA Rating: |
PG |
| Released: |
1954 |
| Directors: |
Alfred Hitchcock
|
| Genre/Type: |
Thriller
Mystery
Psychological Thriller
Romantic Mystery
|
| Producers: |
Alfred Hitchcock
|
Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Laid up with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (
James Stewart) is confined to his tiny, sweltering courtyard apartment. To pass the time between visits from his nurse (
Thelma Ritter) and his fashion model girlfriend Lisa (
Grace Kelly), the binocular-wielding Jeffries stares through the rear window of his apartment at the goings-on in the other apartments around his courtyard. As he watches his neighbors, he assigns them such roles and character names as "Miss Torso" (Georgine Darcy), a professional dancer with a healthy social life or "Miss Lonelyhearts" (Judith Evelyn), a middle-aged woman who entertains nonexistent gentlemen callers. Of particular interest is seemingly mild-mannered travelling salesman Lars Thorwald (
Raymond Burr), who is saddled with a nagging, invalid wife. One afternoon, Thorwald pulls down his window shade, and his wife's incessant bray comes to a sudden halt. Out of boredom, Jeffries casually concocts a scenario in which Thorwald has murdered his wife and disposed of the body in gruesome fashion. Trouble is, Jeffries' musings just might happen to be the truth. One of
Alfred Hitchcock's very best efforts, Rear Window is a crackling suspense film that also ranks with
Michael Powell's
Peeping Tom (1960) as one of the movies' most trenchant dissections of voyeurism. As in most Hitchcock films, the protagonist is a seemingly ordinary man who gets himself in trouble for his secret desires.
| Actors |
Character |
Born |
| James Stewart |
L.B. Jeffries (Jeff) |
May 20, 1908 in Indiana, PA |
| Grace Kelly |
Lisa Carol Fremont |
Nov 12, 1929 in Philadelphia, PA |
| Wendell Corey |
Thomas J. Doyle, detective |
Mar 20, 1914 in Dracut, MA |
| Thelma Ritter |
Stella, the nurse |
Feb 14, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York City, NY |
| Raymond Burr |
Lars Thorwald |
May 21, 1917 in New Westminster, BC, Canada |
| Judith Evelyn |
Miss Lonely Heart |
|
| Georgine Darcy |
Miss Torso, the dancer |
Jan 14, 1931 in Brooklyn, New York City, NY |
| Sara Berner |
Fire Escape Woman |
|
| Frank Cady |
Fire Escape Man |
Sep 8, 1915 in Susanville, CA |
| Rand Harper |
Honeymooner |
|
| Jesslyn Fax |
Miss Hearing Aid |
Jan 4, 1893 in Toronto, Canada |
| Irene Winston |
Mrs. Thorwald |
|
| Havis Davenport |
Newlywed |
|
| Ralph Smiley |
Carl the Waiter |
|
| Jerry Antes |
Dancer |
|
| Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. |
Songwriter |
Jan 27, 1919 |
On the surface a comic thriller about a photographer and the crime he thinks took place across the courtyard,
Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) turns into an interrogation of voyeurism and movie-viewing. Keeping the camera in Jeff's apartment (except for a couple of shots near the climax), Hitchcock limits the audience's view to what Jeff can see and hear from his immobilized perch. He is free to take in the spectacle of the events in the apartments that he sees, but he is powerless to intervene. Why he looks, however, is the larger question; Hitchcock suggests not just that Jeff is channel-surfing among apartments for idle entertainment but also that the urge to peep is a more universal trait than we might care to acknowledge. What Jeff finds, moreover, becomes a fantasy projection of his own fears about his own relationship with Lisa. Jeff becomes a voyeur to escape, but his gaze is literally -- and violently -- turned back on him by the suspected wife-killer in his thriller narrative. Wryly entertaining as well as skillfully executed and thematically complex, the popular Rear Window earned Hitchcock an Oscar nomination for Best Director and inspired such later films as
Francis Ford Coppola's
The Conversation (1974) and
Brian De Palma's
Sisters (1973). It was remade in 1998 as a TV movie with
Christopher Reeve in the
James Stewart role.