Rear Window is a 1954 suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and written by John Michael Hayes, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder", and starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey and Raymond Burr. The film is considered by many film-goers, critics, and scholars to be one of Hitchcock's best and most thrilling pictures. [1] Rear Window , which received four Academy Award nominations, was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1997. It was ranked #48 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).

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Plot

thumb Photographer L. B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is recuperating from a broken leg and confined to a wheelchair in his small Greenwich Village apartment. He passes the time by spying on his neighbors through his apartment's rear window, including a dancer who exercises in her underwear, a lonely woman who lives by herself, a songwriter working at his piano, and several married couples, including a salesman, Lars Thorwald, (Raymond Burr) with a bedridden wife.

Every day Jeff is visited by Stella (Thelma Ritter), a cranky but friendly home care nurse and Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), his much-younger socialite girlfriend. Lisa is madly in love with Jeff, who returns her feelings but also believes that their lifestyles are incompatible. He talks to both Lisa and Stella about his neighbors. After the salesman makes repeated late-night trips carrying a large case, Jeff notices that the bedridden wife is now gone, and sees the salesman cleaning a large knife and handsaw. Later, the salesman ties a large packing crate with heavy rope, and has moving men haul it away. By now, Jeff, Stella, and Lisa have concluded the missing wife has been murdered by the salesman.

An old Army Air Corps buddy of Jeff named Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey) is now a police detective. He looks into the situation and finds that Mrs. Thorwald is in the country, has sent a postcard to her husband, and the packing crate they had seen was full of her clothes. Chastised, they all admit to feeling a bit ghoulish at being disappointed to find out there was not a murder. Jeff and Lisa settle down for an evening alone, but a scream soon pierces the courtyard when a dog belonging to a neighbor couple is found dead with its neck broken. The neighbors all rush to their windows to see what has happened, except for Thorwald, who sits unmoving in his dark apartment, the tip of his cigarette glowing.

Convinced that Thorwald is guilty after all, Lisa slips a note—written by Jeff—under his door asking "What have you done with her?" while Jeff watches his reaction. As a pretext to get him away from his apartment, Jeff calls Thorwald and arranges a meeting at a bar. He thinks Thorwald killed the dog to keep it from digging up something Thorwald may have buried in the courtyard flower patch. When Thorwald leaves, Lisa and Stella grab a shovel and start digging, but find nothing.

Lisa climbs the fire escape to Thorwald's apartment and squeezes in an open window. Inside she finds Mrs. Thorwald's purse, which she believes Mrs. Thorwald would never have left behind on a trip. She holds the purse up for Jeff to see, turning it upside-down to show that she has not yet found the woman's wedding ring or jewelry (which they observed Thorwald holding during an earlier phone call). Jeff watches helplessly as Thorwald comes back up the stairs, trapping Lisa inside the apartment. Calling the police as Thorwald goes in, he and Stella watch as Lisa is discovered by Thorwald. Lisa trys to talk her way out, but Thorwald grabs her and turns out the lights. Jeff and Selma listen as Lisa screams for help. Just then, the police arrive, saving Lisa. With the police present, Jeff sees Lisa's hands behind her back, pointing to Mrs. Thorwald's ring, which Lisa now has on her finger. Thorwald sees this as well, and, realizing that she is signaling to someone across the courtyard, looks up directly at Jeff.

Jeff calls Doyle, now convinced that Thorwald is guilty of something, and Stella takes all the cash they have for bail and heads for the police station, leaving Jeff alone. He sees that Thorwald's apartment lights are off, and hears the door to his building slam shut, then slow footsteps begin climbing the stairs. Looking for a method of defense, Jeff can find only the flash for his camera and a box of flashbulbs. The footsteps stop outside his door, which slowly opens. Thorwald stands in the dark, asking "Who are you? What do you want from me?" Jeff does not answer, but as Thorwald comes for him he sets off the flash, blinding Thorwald for a moment. Thorwald fumbles his way to Jeff's wheelchair, grabs him, and pushes him towards the open window. Hanging onto the ledge, yelling for help, Jeff sees Lisa, the detective, and the police all rush over. Thorwald is pulled back, but it is too late, Jeff slips and falls just as the police run up beneath him. Luckily they break his fall, and Lisa sweeps him up in her arms. Thorwald confesses to the murder of his wife, and the police arrest him.

A few days later the heat has lifted, and Jeff rests peacefully in his wheelchair; now with two broken legs from the fall. Lisa reclines happily beside him, appearing to read a book on Himalayan travel but turning, after Jeff is asleep, to a new issue of Harpers Bazaar , a fashion magazine.

Cast

James Stewart as L. B. "Jeff" Jefferies Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont Wendell Corey as Det. Lt. Thomas J. Doyle Thelma Ritter as Stella Raymond Burr as Lars Thorwald Judith Evelyn as Miss Lonelyhearts Ross Bagdasarian as Songwriter Georgine Darcy as Miss Torso Sara Berner as Wife living above Thorwalds Frank Cady as Husband living above Thorwalds Jesslyn Fax as Sculptor neighbor with hearing aid Rand Harper as Newlywed man Irene Winston as Mrs. Anna Thorwald Havis Davenport as Newlywed woman

Marla English as Girl at songwriter's party Kathryn Grant as Girl at songwriter's party Alan Lee as Newlyweds' landlord Anthony Warde as Detective Benny Bartlett as Man with Miss Torso Fred Graham as Detective Harry Landers as Man with Miss Lonelyhearts Dick Simmons as Man with Miss Torso Iphigenie Castiglioni as Woman with bird Ralph Smiley as Carl, waiter from 21 Eddie Parker as Detective Len Hendry as Policeman Mike Mahoney as Policeman

Alfred Hitchcock makes his traditional cameo appearance in the songwriter's apartment, where he is seen winding a clock.

Production

The film was shot entirely at Paramount studios, including an enormous set on one of the soundstages, and employed the Eastmancolor process in use at the time. ^[2] There was also careful use of sound, including natural sounds and music drifting across the apartment building courtyard to James Stewart's apartment. At one point, the voice of Bing Crosby can be heard singing "To See You Is to Love You", originally from the 1952 Paramount film Road to Bali . Also heard on the soundtrack are versions of songs popularized earlier in the decade by Nat King Cole ("Mona Lisa", 1950) and Dean Martin ("That's Amore", 1952), along with segments from Leonard Bernstein's score for Jerome Robbins's ballet Fancy Free (1944), Richard Rodgers's song "Lover" (1932), and "M'appari tutt'amor" from Friedrich von Flotow's opera Martha (1844).

Hitchcock used famed designer Edith Head to design costumes in all of his Paramount films.

Although veteran Hollywood composer Franz Waxman is credited with the score for the film, his contributions were limited to the opening and closing titles and the piano tune played by one of the neighbors during the film. This was Waxman's final score for Hitchcock. The director used primarily "natural" sounds throughout the film. ^[3]

Reception

A "benefit world premiere" for the film, with United Nations officials and "prominent members of the social and entertainment worlds" ^[4] in attendance, was held on August 4, 1954 in New York City, with proceeds going to the American-Korean Foundation (an aid organization founded soon after the end of the Korean War ^[5] and headed by President Eisenhower's brother). Critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times attended that premiere, and in his review called the film a "tense and exciting exercise" and Hitchcock a director whose work has a "maximum of build-up to the punch, a maximum of carefully tricked deception and incidents to divert and amuse"; Crowther also notes:

Mr. Hitchcock's film is not "significant." What it has to say about people and human nature is superficial and glib. But it does expose many facets of the loneliness of city life and it tacitly demonstrates the impulse of morbid curiosity. The purpose of it is sensation, and that it generally provides in the colorfulness of its detail and in the flood of menace toward the end.

Time magazine called it "just possibly the second most entertaining picture (after The 39 Steps ) ever made by Alfred Hitchcock" and a film in which there is "never an instant...when Director Hitchcock is not in minute and masterly control of his material."; the review did note the "occasional studied lapses of taste and, more important, the eerie sense a Hitchcock audience has of reacting in a manner so carefully foreseen as to seem practically foreordained." ^[6]

Variety magazine called the film "one of Alfred Hitchcock's better thrillers" which "combines technical and artistic skills in a manner that makes this an unusually good piece of murder mystery entertainment." ^[7]

Nearly 30 years after the film's initial release, Roger Ebert reviewed the Universal re-release in October 1983, after Hitchcock's estate was settled. He said the film "develops such a clean, uncluttered line from beginning to end that we're drawn through it (and into it) effortlessly. The experience is not so much like watching a movie, as like ... well, like spying on your neighbors. Hitchcock traps us right from the first....And because Hitchcock makes us accomplices in Stewart's voyeurism, we're along for the ride. When an enraged man comes bursting through the door to kill Stewart, we can't detach ourselves, because we looked too, and so we share the guilt and in a way we deserve what's coming to him." ^[8]

Analysis

Hitchcock's fans and film scholars have taken particular interest in the way the relationship between Jeff and Lisa can be compared to the lives of the neighbors they are spying upon. The film invites speculation as to which of these paths Jeff and Lisa will follow. Many of these points are considered in Tania Modleski's feminist theory book, The Women Who Knew Too Much : ^[9]

• Thorwald and his wife are a reversal of Jeff and Lisa—Thorwald looks after his invalid wife just as Lisa looks after the invalid Jeff. However, Thorwald's hatred of his nagging wife mirrors Jeff's arguments with Lisa.
• The newlywed couple initially seem perfect for each other (they spend nearly the entire movie in their bedroom with the blinds drawn), but at the end we see that their marriage to become more realistic as the wife begins to nag the husband. Similarly, Jeff is afraid of being 'tied down' by marriage to Lisa.
• The middle-aged couple with the dog seem content living at home. They have the kind of uneventful lifestyle that horrifies Jeff.
• The music composer and Miss Lonelyhearts, the depressed spinster, lead frustrating lives, and at the end of the movie find comfort in each other (the composer's new tune draws Miss Lonelyhearts away from suicide, and the composer thus finds value in his work). There is a subtle hint in this tale that Lisa and Jeff are meant for each other, despite his stubbornness. The piece the composer creates is called "Lisa's Theme" in the credits.

The characters themselves verbally point out a similarity between Lisa and Miss Torso (played by Georgine Darcy) — the scantily-clad ballet dancer who has all-male parties. Other analysis, including Francois Truffaut in Cahiers du Cinema in 1954, centers on the relationship between Jeff and the other side of the apartment block, seeing it as a symbolic relationship between spectator and screen. Film theorist Mary Ann Doane has made the argument that Jeff, representing the audience, becomes obsessed with the screen, where a collection of storylines are played out. This line of analysis has often followed a feminist approach to interpreting the film. It is Doane who, using Freudian analysis to claim women spectators of a film become "masculinized", pays close attention to Jeff's rather passive attitude to romance with the elegant Lisa, that is, until she crosses over from the spectator side to the screen, seeking out the wedding ring of Thorwald's murdered wife. It is only then that Jeff shows real passion for Lisa. In the climax, when he is pushed through the window (the screen), he has been forced to become part of the show.

Other issues such as voyeurism and feminism are analyzed in John Belton's book Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" .

Legacy

The film received four Academy Award nominations: Best Director for Alfred Hitchcock, Best Screenplay for John Michael Hayes, Best Cinematography, Color for Robert Burks, Best Sound Recording for Loren L. Ryder, Paramount Pictures. John Michael Hayes won a 1955 Edgar Award for best motion picture.

In 1997, Rear Window was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Rear Window was restored by the team of Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz for its 1999 limited theatrical re-release and the Collector's Edition DVD release in 2000.

American Film Institute recognition

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #42
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #14
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #48
• AFI's 10 Top 10 #3 Mystery ^{[10] [10]}

Ownership

Ownership of the copyright in Woolrich's original story was eventually litigated before the United States Supreme Court in Stewart v. Abend , 495 U.S. 207 (1990). The film was copyrighted in 1954 by Patron Inc. — a production company set up by Hitchcock and Stewart. As a result, Stewart and Hitchcock's estate became involved in the Supreme Court case.

Rear Window is one of several of Hitchcock's films originally released by Paramount Pictures, for which Hitchcock retained the copyright, and which was later acquired by Universal Studios in 1983 from Hitchcock's estate.

Influence

Rear Window has been repeatedly re-told, parodied, or referenced.

Film

Brian De Palma paid homage to Rear Window with his film Body Double , which also borrows heavily from Hitchcock's Vertigo . The 2001 film Head Over Heels starring Freddie Prinze Jr., in which a young woman falls for a man she believes she saw commit a murder, closely follows the plot of Rear Window . Marcos Bernstein's The Other Side of The Street (2004) also makes a reference to Rear Window , albeit with a Brazilian twist. Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath is another film that pays tribute to this film and other Hitchcock features. Clubhouse Detectives (1996) is a retelling, aimed at a younger audience, where a young boy sees a neighbor kill a student and bury her under his floor boards.

Disturbia (2007) is a modern day retelling, with the protagonist (Shia LaBeouf) under house arrest instead of laid up with a broken leg and who believes that his neighbor is a serial killer rather than having committed a single murder. On September 5, 2008, the Sheldon Abend Trust sued Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks, Viacom, and Universal Studios, alleging that the producers of Disturbia violated the rights of Abend and the Woolrich estate, by not acquiring the rights to the Woolrich story.

Television

Rear Window was remade as a made-for-television movie of the same name in 1998, with an updated storyline in which the lead character is paralyzed and lives in a high-tech home filled with assistive technology. Actor Christopher Reeve, himself paralyzed as the result of a 1995 horse-riding accident, was cast in the lead role. The telefilm also starred Daryl Hannah, Robert Forster, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and Anne Twomey. It aired November 22, 1998 on the ABC television network.

The film's plot was parodied in The Simpsons episode Bart of Darkness. Invader Zim also spoofs the movie in one scence in A Room with a Moose .

Notes

1. Rear Window Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
2. {{imdb title|0047396|Rear Window|(Additional details)}}
3. DVD documentary
4. A 'Rear Window' View Seen at the Rivoli, an August 5, 1954 review from ''The New York Times''
5. Statement by the President on the fund-raising campaign of the American-Korean Foundation from a University of California, Santa Barbara website
6. The New Pictures, an August 2, 1954 review from ''Time'' magazine
7. Review of ''Rear Window'', a July 14, 1954 article from ''Variety'' magazine
8. 1983 Review of ''Rear Window'' re-release by Roger Ebert
9. Modleski, Tania, ''The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory'' (New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc., 1989) ISBN 0-415-97362-7
10. AFI's 10 Top 10
11. AFI's 10 Top 10