Rear Window

Rear Window (1954) 

Notable cast/crew: James Stewart as LB "Jeff" Jefferies.  This was the second of four films he would make with Hitchcock.  Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont.  This was the second of three consecutive movies she would make with Hitchcock.  Raymond Burr as Lars Thorwald.  Costumes by Edith Head.

Running time: 115 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: Jeff is a magazine photographer.  He's laid up with a broken leg with nothing to do but watch his neighbors across the courtyard.  His girlfriend, Lisa, wants him to give up the world-travelling gig.  They have a spat over it, and she leaves him for the night.  Not long after, there is a scream, and the sound of smashing glass followed by silence.

The set

Jeff notices Mr Thorwald leaving in the middle of the night during a downpour.  Thorwald returns an hour later.  He's home for only a minute then leaves again into the night.  He returns again during the night and leaves the following morning with someone who appears to be his wife.

The next day, a neighbor's dog is sniffing and digging at Thorwald's flowers which alarms him.  Jeff becomes concerned that between the odd comings and goings of Thorwald and the sudden absence of his wife that Thorwald has murdered her.  Lisa disbelieves Jeff until she sees Thorwald tying up a trunk in his wife's now empty room.  Jeff calls a police detective he knows to come look things over.  There's no evidence of anything so they continue to watch the apartment.  Thorwald still has all of his wife's jewelry despite her supposedly having gone to the country for her health.

Doyle, the detective, refuses to believe Jeff for lack of any evidence to support his theory.  There are enough witnesses who saw Thorwald put the woman on the train that he thinks Jeff and Lisa have gotten themselves worked up over nothing.  Doyle had intercepted Thorwald's trunk, and there were just clothes, no body.  Later that night, the dog that had been digging at the flowers is found dead, strangled with a broken neck.  The only person who doesn't come outside when the dog's owner screams is Thorwald who sits in the dark in his apartment smoking.

Thorwald's flowers have gotten shorter recently raising more suspicion.  They decide to spook him by leaving a note asking "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?"  They then ring him up and ask him what he did with his wife.  They lure him out of the apartment by insinuating blackmail and arranging to meet him at a hotel.  Thorwald leaves, and Lisa goes over to his apartment to see what's under the flowers.  Lisa finds nothing under the flowers and goes to Thorwald's apartment.  Thorwald returns before she can leave.  Jeff calls the police who arrive before Thorwald can do anything to her.  They take her away, but before they do, she motions to Jeff that she has Mrs Thorwald's wedding ring.  Thorwald sees this and realizes who has been watching him.

Thorwald shows up at Jeff's wanting to know what Jeff wants from him.  Thorwald tries to throw Jeff out the window as the police arrive.  The police get Thorwald, but Jeff falls breaking his other leg.  Thorwald confesses to killing his wife and admits he scattered her body across the city.

MacGuffin: What's buried in the garden?

Hitchcock cameo: Winding a clock in the musician's apartment

Hitchcock themes: 

• Murder
• Voyeurism
• Blondes

Verdict: One of Hitchcock's best, this movie has it all: A-list casting, an elaborate set, and a riveting finale.  Those final five minutes where Jeff is helpless and alone as he can hear Thorwald coming up the stairs have you squirming in your seat hoping he can somehow get away.  Jimmy Stewart is much better-cast in this than he was in Rope.  He stands in for the audience as the audience watches him.  Hitchcock explained it as a fairly simple set-up: show Jeff, cut to what he sees, show his reaction.  Because we're watching him watch others we react sympathetically as he does to them which draws us into his story as he is drawn into his neighbors' stories.

Alfred Hitchcock supposedly hired Raymond Burr to play Lars Thorwald because he could be easily made to look like Hitchcock's old producer David O Selznick, who Alfred Hitchcock felt interfered too much.  Ross Bagdasarian played the composer in the studio loft where Hitchcock makes his cameo.  Bagdasarian was a real musician who performed under the name David Seville, and he created Alvin & the Chipmunks.

The entire picture was shot on one set, which required months of planning and construction.  The apartment-courtyard set measured 98 feet wide, 185 feet long and 40 feet high, and it consisted of 31 apartments, eight of which were completely furnished.  The courtyard was set 20 to 30 feet below stage level, and some of the buildings were the equivalent of five or six stories high.  Alfred Hitchcock had the production company tear out the entire floor of the studio, revealing the basement.  What the audience sees as the courtyard was originally the basement level of the studio.  All the apartments in Thorwald's building had electricity and running water, and they could be lived in.  During the month-long shoot, Georgine Darcy, who played "Miss Torso", lived in her apartment all day, relaxing between takes as if really at home.  While shooting, Hitchcock worked only in Jeff's apartment.  The actors in other apartments wore flesh-colored earpieces so that he could radio his directions to them.

The film was inspired in part by the real-life murder case of Patrick Mahon.  In 1924, in Sussex, England, Mahon murdered his pregnant mistress, Emily Kaye, and dismembered her body.  Hitchcock claimed that Mahon threw the body parts out of a train window piece by piece and burned the head in his fireplace.  Another source, however, states that Mahon quartered the body and stored it in a large trunk then removed internal organs, putting some in biscuit tins and a hatbox and boiling others on the stove.  In addition to Mahon, Hitchcock noted the 1910 case of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen also served as an inspiration for the film.  Crippen, an American living in London, poisoned his wife and cut up her body then told police that she had moved to Los Angeles.  Crippen was eventually caught after his secretary, with whom he was having an affair, was seen wearing Mrs. Crippen's jewelry, and a family friend searched unsuccessfully for Mrs. Crippen in California.  After Scotland Yard became involved, Crippen and his mistress fled England under false names and were apprehended on an ocean liner.  Police found parts of Mrs. Crippen's body in her cellar.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: To Catch a Thief