Rear Window (1954)

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Rear Window (1954)

6/10

Starring

James Stewart

Grace Kelly

Wendell Corey

Thelma Ritter

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Always close your windows and drains; there could be a peeping tom about.

Rear window coins the phrase, “an idle hand is the devils workshop”, as our character "Jeff" Jeffries played by James Stewart, who spent most of his days peeping into the houses of his neighbors, due to a broken leg that has him confined to a wheel chair.

Rear window was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and is based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder".

The movie stars James Stewart and the beautiful Princess Grace Kelly. It was nominated for four Academy Awards and has remained in the top 50 of AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies list and on their 10th-anniversary edition.

This movie is my third best James Stewart movie so far (I hope to see more) after It's A Wonderful Life (1946) and Mr Smith Goes To Washington (1939).

The movie is considered to be one of Hitchcock's finest films. On the website Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of a 100%, so definitely it is a movie to watch.

The movie plot is about a Professional photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries who breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race.

Now he is on a wheel chair with a cast on his leg and he can’t leave his New York apartment. To pass time he peeps out his rear window observing the neighbors, memorising their patterns and trying not to miss a thing happening in their lives.

Things starts getting thrilling when he begins to suspect that a man across the courtyard may have murdered his wife.

There are movies whose themes can be said to have been based on Rear Window like Michael Davis's Eight Days a Week in 1999, Robert Zemeckis's What Lies Beneath in 2000 and Disturbia in 2007 which kinda reminds you of Rear Window itself except the protagonist (Shia LaBeouf) is under house arrest instead of on a wheel chair with a broken leg, and his neighbor is a serial killer other than having committed a single murder.

Many TV shows too have used this Rear Window idea like The Simpsons, White Collar and more. But the TV movie that was done 1998 which was a remake of the 1954 classic is my best, I actually saw the TV movie first before seeing the original it stared Christopher Reeve, who himself was paralyzed as the result of a 1995 horse-riding accident, so he fitted the role perfectly.

Well enough has been said about Rear Window, it is a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller that I can say if you are watching all Alfred Hitchcock classic then you must see this one.