Human beings do not do well with change. We resist it and seek distractions wherever we can, especially in moments when we should be looking within rather than out. That has only become a harder habit to kick, too, in the Internet Age. Why take care of our problems or acknowledge our own hang-ups when we can just watch other peoples’ lives pass by in front of our eyes with just a few swipes of our fingers? As Thelma Ritter’s nurse, Stella, puts it in Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1954 masterpiece, Rear Window: “We’ve become a race of peeping toms.”
That line may have been written by screenwriter John Michael Hayes 70 years ago, but it’s only become more relevant in the decades since. It’s a comment directed in the film at Stella’s client, L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart), a thrill-seeking photographer who has been left apartment-bound in a giant, itchy plaster cast after breaking his leg during a job gone wrong. With nothing to do but sit in his wheelchair and look out his apartment window, L.B. has taken to passing the time by spying on his neighbors’ lives through their courtyard windows. Before long, he’s become convinced that one of his fellow tenants, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), has secretly killed his wife.
What follows is a paranoia-soaked thrill ride through which Hitchcock and Hayes find increasingly tense and playful ways to explore the real-life and cinematic allure of voyeurism. It’s a film about the dangers of distracting yourself that is itself an endlessly entertaining, clever distraction. As far as this writer is concerned, it is as perfect a Hollywood thriller as there’s ever been. Thanks to its sweaty, heat wave aesthetic, it’s also a great way to spend a September afternoon or night as we all wait for the dog days of summer to give way to fall.
Murder makes the heart grow fonder
Here’s one thing you should know about L.B. Jeffries: He doesn’t want to be tied down. That fear is exacerbated by his offscreen injury in Rear Window, which has left him literally trapped in his apartment. He’s a photojournalist who seems to care more about the adventures his job provides than the images he captures — regardless of whether they involve nights spent sleeping on rocks in the jungle or standing in the middle of a dangerous racetrack. If there’s one thing he dreads, it’s settling down. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what his whip-smart partner, Lisa Fremont (a luminous Grace Kelly) wants him to do — with her, preferably.
The two are a classic case of opposites attract. L.B. is a gruff man who’d rather live out of his suitcase than an apartment. Lisa is a socialite who is always excited to share the details about her newest dress or most recent party. L.B. doesn’t believe they fit together. Lisa knows they do. A majority of their early scenes together are crackling sparring matches of flirtation and frustration. There is, in turn, immense pleasure to be found in witnessing how Stewart telegraphs L.B.’s love for Lisa with his adoring glances and smitten smiles even as the character repeatedly avoids committing to a real future with her. It’s through Stewart’s performance that we learn the unspoken truth: L.B. does want to be with Lisa, but he’s afraid of how settling down will alter his own image of himself. “She’s too perfect,” he tells Stella in Rear Window‘s opening scene. “If she was only ordinary.” But if she was, of course, he never would have fallen in love with her.
In his growing obsession with the seeming disappearance of Lars Thorwald’s once bed-ridden wife, both L.B. and Lisa find a way to get what they want. He grabs hold of a distraction from the real issues of his life, as well as a chance to get another taste of the death-defying excitement that has long sustained him. Lisa, meanwhile, sees an opportunity to prove to L.B. that she’s not as fragile or risk-adverse as he so firmly believes. Their twin desires culminates in a largely silent sequence in which L.B. watches as Lisa sneaks across his apartment building’s courtyard and climbs through the window of Thorwald’s apartment — looking for any proof that he really killed his wife. The scene is unbearably tense, and it’s made all the more so by the distance Hitchcock shoots it from. The director lets it play out in long, steady camera pans that repeatedly reinforce just how little L.B. will be able to do to help Lisa if she gets caught. I’ve seen this particular set piece at least 100 times now, and I still feel my heart-rate quicken and my throat tighten every time it begins.
There’s a reason why Hitchcock is called the Master of Suspense
Hitchcock has long been known as the Master of Suspense. When you watch Rear Window, it’s clear why. The film is a slow burn of tension, paranoia, doubt, and creeping dread — one that ends by using its own cinematic rules to suddenly make you lurch forward. During Lisa’s eventual invasion of Thorwald’s apartment, for instance, Hitchcock uses the distance between it and L.B.’s home, which had previously acted as a buffer of comfortable safety for the viewer, to make you fear even more for Lisa’s safety. Then, after establishing enough of a comfortable degree of separation between the film’s protagonist and antagonist across 90 minutes, Hitchcock makes your stomach drop to the floor by removing that space in Rear Window‘s paralyzingly intense climax. Suffice it to say: In no other movie has a door slowly opening ever been quite as terrifying. Moments later, however, Rear Window still manages to end with a visual joke that’ll leave you grinning from ear to ear.
And therein lies the true brilliance of the film. In an age when it seems like so many movies are either too comedic or too dour — and not to mention entirely devoid of romance — Rear Window has a little bit of everything. It is funny and dramatic, romantic and chilling. As you watch it, you almost forget that the entire film is unfolding from within the confines of its reckless hero’s apartment. Hitchcock and Hayes fill L.B.’s existence with so much life that Rear Window feels boundless, and that’s to say nothing of how much the duo do to build out the mini-world of L.B.’s apartment building. Each of his courtyard’s fellow residents gets a name, and we are given access to their lives in the form of self-contained, wholly visual stories. A songwriter struggles to finish his latest piece. A ballerina fends off the advances of men who want nothing more than to control her. A newlywed couple’s initially passionate life together eventually gives way to everyday mundanity.
Why Rear Window is still resonant after all these years
Nearly all of Rear Window‘s apartment stories are told without any dialogue. We see them unfold through the gaze of Stewart’s bored photographer, and you could easily watch Rear Window with the sound off and still understand everything that happens in it. (You would, however, miss out on some of the snappiest dialogue in film history.) This not only reinforces Hitchcock’s technical prowess as a filmmaker but it also allows the director to playfully explore one of the most appealing aspects of cinema itself.
As a form, it offers viewers a window into worlds that are not our own, and we accept that opportunity as excitedly and hungrily as L.B. Jeffries does his peeks into his neighbors’ lives. “That’s a secret private world you’re looking into out there,” Wendell Corey’s doubtful police detective, Tom Doyle, tells Stewart’s L.B. at one point in the film, and he’s certainly not wrong. But that’s the whole point.
Rear Window (1954) is available to rent now on all major digital platforms.
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