Rear Window

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	1954
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Alfred Hitchcock
Genre:	Murder / Intrigue
Starring:	James Stewart, Grace Kelly
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/
Tagline:	Through his rear window and the eye of his powerful camera he watched a great city tell on itself, expose its cheating ways...and Murder!
Favourite line:	Jeff: "Why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?" Lisa: "He likes the way his wife welcomes him home."

At time of writing, this is rated at number 16 in the IMDB hall of fame.
Quite an accolade, and one I simply can't agree with.

The premise:
James Stewart plays Jefferies, a photographer by trade who has suffered an accident, resulting in him being wheelchair bound for eight weeks. It's week seven when we join him, and he's starting to get irritable about being stuck in his apartment for so long. To occupy his time, he spends many hours staring out of his back window at the courtyard, and the surrounding apartments, watching the movements of his neighbours secretly: A dancer opposite, who always prances around in her bikini(!), a lonely lady who always eats alone, a salesman and his wife.
One day, the salesman begins to act mysteriously, carrying case after case out in the middle of the night, Jefferies spies on him wrapping huge carving knives in newspaper, as well as pushing a neighbourhood dog away from a patch of flowers, as if there were something buried there he didn't want anyone to find.
Could the salesman have killed his wife?
And was Jefferies the lone witness to a sinister act?

The conceit is intriguing, and the study of the way we perceive events fascinating, as Jefferies fills in missing pieces and downright fabricates events he knows next to nothing about.
But it is damned slow.
I am aware that some allowance has to be made for the time it was made, and my effusive praise of Hitchcock's 'Dial M For Murder', made the same year, should indicate I am no neanderthal who needs an explosion every ten minutes to stop me switching over to Fear Factor, but this bloody crawled.
The acting is very good, overall, and the setup menacing enough.
Special mention must be given for the sheer technicality of the piece - the mastery with which Hitchcock sets up the courtyard and the hive of activity therein really is exceptional, and I suspect this is the main reason the movie scores so highly with critics. But technicality alone cannot carry a movie.
Interesting, and well worth watching, but this really should have been twenty minutes shorter.