Rear Window (1954)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Rear Window (1954) – A. Hitchcock

A perennial favourite and one of Hitch’s best (if you haven’t seen it, I’m surprised).  Jimmy Stewart is a world-travelling photographer laid up in his Greenwich Village apartment with a broken leg.  Grace Kelly is his high society girlfriend who wants to get married.  The film takes place on one set which is basically the courtyard beyond Stewart’s “rear window” where he can observe all of his neighbors through their own windows.  So, the viewer is placed in the role of “peeping tom” and Hitchcock makes much of the parallel between film viewer and voyeur.  It does feel a bit sleazy at times.  But when Stewart thinks he’s witnessed a murder (and also a potential suicide), questions about responsibility for engaging with one’s community start to arise.  Of course, the suspense mounts as Kelly and Stewart try to catch the murderer.  After this viewing (my umpteenth), I read an essay by critic Robin Wood that added a new interpretation, one that I had never come up with myself:  As Stewart spends the early part of the film telling nurse Thelma Ritter that he wants to break up with Kelly because she will never fit into his lifestyle, he is potentially identified with Raymond Burr’s wife-killing villain.  As such, the psychodynamic process of defeating Burr is akin to destroying his need to eliminate Kelly.  As a result, he gives into her desire to be married and ends up fully in captivity (two broken legs).  When Burr attacks him and he responds with flashbulbs, he is really shining a therapeutic light on his own deeper conflict.  So, a somewhat wacky interpretation but not without some interest, proving again that Rear Window is a much richer and more rewarding film than a surface viewing might suggest (even for the umpteenth time).