‘Rear Window’

Well, now my fellow bloggers have gone too far.  It is one thing to slag me off for being old. People like me and Senator John McCain are used to it and take it as part of the cost of still staying involved in the real world. But when people start saying rude things about Rear Window, then that is simply too much. I have spoken before of my love of American movies, especially those from the 1950s. Shane is still my all time favorite, but Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window comes a very close second—very close.

First—warning, plot spoiler—the story itself is simple but gripping and unfolds with perfect timing. A professional photographer (for magazines), L. B. Jeffries (“Jeff”), has had one of his legs smashed up when he was on assignment. He is confined to a chair in his apartment, in Greenwich Village, looking out onto an enclosed courtyard, where he can and does spy (or if you like, simply observe) his neighbors. These include a newlywed couple, a lonely spinster, a composer, a dancer, a couple with a dog, and a salesman (Lars Thorwold) caring for his sick wife. Jeff has a rich girlfriend Lisa who wafts in and out of the apartment in ever-more-glamorous outfits. He also has a nurse (Stella) who comes over to care for him and give him massages. Thorwold’s wife vanishes, and Jeff and Lisa become convinced that he has murdered her. An old friend of Jeff, Detective Tom Doyle, investigates and finds nothing amiss. But Jeff and Lisa persist and eventually the crime is uncovered. This involves Lisa getting into the Thorwold’s apartment where she is caught, and while she is away being booked Thorwold coming over to Jeff’s place with murderous intent. He is held off by Jeff flashing photography bulbs in his face, but in the end although he is captured Jeff falls from the apartment and the final scene finds him back in the chair with both legs now broken!

Second the acting. James Stewart plays Jeff. By the 1950s it was becoming very clear that Stewart was not simply Mister Nice Guy as in Wonderful Life but could give evidence of a more complex, darker side. This comes through very clearly in Vertigo, where he plays the obsessive Scotty, forcing the salesgirl Judy into the role of the dead Madeleine. But here too, there is much if not to dislike then of which to be wary. Jeff is a very successful photographer and that means a certain ruthlessness. Any normal man would die for Lisa, but not Jeff, who is far from keen to be trapped into a relationship. Also there is the peeping, the obsession with his neighbors. It is true that it is hard for him to do much else, but he revels in it. Grace Kelley is pretty good too.  I find it hard to get past her almost ethereal beauty, but she slips so naturally into the role of a rich girl—which of course she was in real life—and is a great counter to Jeff, knowing exactly what he wants and exactly how she is going to get what she wants instead. The lesser roles are handled well also. The sinister Thorwold is played perfectly by Raymond Burr, who later went on to fame on television as Perry Mason and then Ironside. And best of all is Thelma Ritter as Stella. She must have been a character actor in half of the movies of the fifties. Here she is perfect as the confident little nurse who gradually switches from disgust at the voyeurism to conviction about the truth of the crime.

Third there is the oppressive claustrophobic atmosphere.  People seem as if locked into the courtyard apartments and it is tremendously hot. The strain and tension is there from the start, murder or no murder.  Or rather, the murder seems almost to emerge naturally from the strain of the surroundings. Others are under pressure also. Jeff most obviously as he tried to cope with being stuck in the chair, unable to sleep properly at night and hence almost forced into obsessive interest in the others. Miss Lonelyhearts trying to find a companion to love and by whom to be loved. The dancer with her boyfriends. The composer and the others. Hitchcock’s brilliance comes through as he does so much with so little. No mountains, no horses, no battles, no Riviera (as we had in To Catch a Thief), just an enclosed space with apartments looking out into it, and a sordid little tragedy occurring within it.

Fourth, and this is a point that always gets to my students when I show Rear Window in my film course, there is the almost misogynist portrayal of male-female relationships. Most obviously of course between Thorwold and his wife. He murders her! But it is made very clear early in the movie that she is a very unpleasant person, waited on hand and foot by her husband and always complaining and sneering. Then there is the newly married couple. At first all is terrific, but by the end of the film the tensions are showing, as she starts to yell at him. Miss Lonelyhearts with her misfortunes as she tries to pick up men is another case, as are the trivial relationships that surround the dancer. But most significant is the uneasy relationship between Jeff and Lisa. He likes her but he simply doesn’t want a permanent relationship. He is passionate about photography and not about her. She knows this and works and manipulates to get a different result. Even at the end, there isn’t much hope of a true meeting of minds. She pretends to be interested in going off on safari, but truly the New York fashion scene is where she belongs and wants to stay. You are missing a lot if you don’t see this side to the movie and come away feeling slightly queasy.

Fifth, it is slightly grubby too. It is the moral and aesthetic ambiguity that makes Rear Window such a good movie for my Philosophy and Film course. Being a Peeping Tom isn’t just wrong, it is also somewhere between pathetic and disgusting. Guys hanging around other people’s gardens hoping to see women in their bras and panties—women who are unaware that they are being spied upon. And yet, this is right at the center of Rear Window. Jeff looking at the dancer as she prances around her apartment in her underwear. It is true, of course, that it leads to the detection of a murder, but Jeff and Lisa are hardly innocents. They get a kick out of looking at the lives of others, knowing that the others are unaware of their interest. It all connects with the oppressive claustrophobia and the disfunctional relationships. Jeff and Lisa are beautiful, successful people, but there is this dark side, as there is to us all. I don’t want to say that Rear Window is a religious movie, because I don’t think it is particularly. But it does tell us something uncomfortable about human nature and its darker aspects.

All in all, a very good movie that bears watching over and over. Now, does anyone want to say something rude about Pillow Talk with Doris Day and Rock Hudson? Thelma Ritter is in that too.