We live in an age
where voyeurism is not only accepted, but also sometimes encouraged thanks to
social media tools that lets anybody share photos and videos of themselves to,
well, anybody. The concept of peaking into someone else’s life is of course not
new, as exemplified in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Rear Window (1954) in which a wheelchair-bound man kills time by
starring at his neighbours through binoculars. A slightly immoral pastime, but
it gets him in a world of trouble when he believes he might have witnessed one
neighbour disposing of a murder victim.
The concept is so
genius and has been repeated so many times over the years that by the time I
got the Rear Window DVD as a
Christmas present along with a few other Hitchcock classics I already had a
pretty good idea of how this story goes. Times have changed since 1954, but the
movie’s concept still works and has been copied and/or parodied by everyone
from Saturday Night Live to Tiny Toon Adventures. Of course to fully
appreciate the spoof, it always helps to watch the classic that inspired it in
the first place.
The character of
L.B “Jeff” Jefferies (James Stewart) is already a bit of a voyeur to begin
with, albeit a professional one, since he takes photos for a living. In an
attempt to get a very good shot of a racetrack accident, he got as close as
possible to the action. While the end result was indeed a spectacular shot, it
also landed him in his Greenwich apartment with a broken leg. On the up side,
he gets regular visit from his socialite girlfriend Lisa Fremont, played by
Grace Kelly. If it’s a Hitchcock film, expect a beautiful blond.
Yet Jeff is bored
because of his confinement, and since all of his neighbours have left their
windows opened due to a heat wave he decides to observe their lives through his
binoculars. He sees people of all walks of life, such as sculptors, piano
players, single people looking for company, and various married couples. One of
those couples is made up of a travelling jewellery salesman named Lars Thorwald
(Raymond Burr) who has a bedridden wife.
Heat waves have a
tendency to cause thunderstorms and during one such storm Jeff believes he hears
disturbing sounds coming from Thorwald’s apartment. Later he watches Thorwald
leave his apartment many times, sometimes carrying his sample case, and
sometimes disposing of a large trunk. The sight of Thorwald cleaning up sharp instruments
and the sudden disappearance of wife leads Jeff to believe Thorwald might have
murdered her during that storm. Jeff tells his suspicions to Lisa, his nurse
Stella (Thelma Ritter), and even contacts his friend Detective Tom Doyle
(Wendell Corey) to open an official investigation. Of course they believe
boredom has gotten the better of Jeff, especially since from what Doyle can
find out Mrs. Thorwald left upstate with the trunk.
One of the
beauties of the film is how for a while the audience does not know what to
believe even if we see the same things Jeff sees. From his point of view it
seems very obvious that something gruesome has occurred in his backyard, but
everyone has a reasonable explanation for what he has seen through his
binoculars. What Jeff should do is stop looking outside his window and instead
should focus his attention on possibly building a life with Lisa. However, what
if everyone is wrong and he is not just crying wolf?
In terms of
production this is an old-fashioned studio movie, by which I mean it was shot
entirely on a movie studio where an enormous set was built. Each of the
apartments Jeff observes has their own little stories and characters, as though
he were watching different TV channels. James Stewart was one of those actors
who specialized in playing the everyman, which suggests we are all somewhat
voyeuristic deep down and curiosity would probably lead us to stare at those
windows ourselves were we in Jeff’s situations. The fact Jeff may be starring
at a potential murderer serves as a pretty important if obvious warning: when
you are spying on people, they just might stare back.
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