Review of Rear Window, directed by Alfred Hitchcock

When I was an undergraduate in New York City, I managed to bamboozle my way into some classes that were only for film majors. I was a film minor at the time, but I wanted to break more into cultural criticism, so I tried to get into the film criticism and theory class that was for film majors only.

I was successful in taking the class, but it meant I had to take Introduction to Film with the freshman film majors. That meant I was in a lot of scenarios where it got technical, but I felt like it made me a better critic in the long run. For those of you who are new here, I’ve worked as a film critic for 2.5 years, and only just quit my contract position at a publisher doing that job.

Anyways, one of the movies we had to watch during the Introduction to Film class was Rear Window. We watched a lot of movies in that class, but I’ll never forget watching Rear Window and Requiem for a Dream.

It was the fact I could not forget that led me back to this movie. I decided to rewatch five years later, which was certainly a time to revisit this movie.

Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much!

After breaking his leg, a professional photographer notices something is amiss outside his window.

Our main character in this movie is Jeff, who, in the 1950s, works as a photographer in New York City. He recently broke his leg and cannot do anything, so he maneuvers around his apartment in the Village with a wheelchair. There’s also a heat wave going on, which may be making everything worse than it already it is.

He’s occasionally visited by his girlfriend, Lisa, and Stella, a nurse who’s helping him out. They’re going to become his little helpers in the investigation that’s about to pop up in their lives.

It’s when he’s doing nothing that Jeff decides to start watching his neighbors outside of his rear windows. Everyone else in the neighborhood also has their windows open because of how hot it is, making it even easier to eavesdrop at what’s going on around the neighborhood.

One night, though, Jeff notices the sound of a woman screaming and glass breaking. That’s not the only weird thing to happen during the night: he also spots a neighbor coming in and out of his house with a suitcase, then a woman during a trip. The next morning, he sees the guy cleaning a huge knife and handsaw, which makes Jeff think he killed his wife.

Jeff immediately tells Stella and Lisa, who notice the wife isn’t in bed anymore. Jeff then calls his buddy at the NYPD, Tom, to go out and see anything is wrong. A dog is then found dead, which shocks everyone except the neighbor. Jeff decides to lure him outside so the women could look around the guy’s flower bed, which the dog was last seen around.

They find nothing, but then they find a neighbor about to off themselves with drugs. Lisa put herself inside the home, and that’s when the guy comes home. He finds Lisa and calls the police, but she found his wife’s ring in the process.

Jeff’s detective friend is called, but the neighbor, Thorwald, knows Jeff is onto him and confronts him inside his own apartment. The two struggle, and the police show up just as he drops Jeff out the window.

The neighbor is arrested for the murder, which he confesses to, but Jeff broke his other leg in his fall. He’s now bedridden, and Lisa is last seen reading to him until he falls asleep.

Overall Thoughts

When I first saw this movie, I had not watched a ton of Hitchcock movies beforehand. I had seen Psycho, and that was pretty much it. I knew this was a good movie, but I couldn’t understand why.

It’s certainly a movie from the 1950s, and it’s very much a Hitchcock movie now that I’ve seen a ton of them and am aware of the conventions of his films. Is it my favorite of his though? I don’t think so.

However, it’s still a very good movie. If you want to learn more about film and suspense, this is the one to learn from. It’s such a straightforward plot and kind of predictable, but he still makes it interesting and compelling as a movie experience. That’s the hand of a master filmmaker.

Go watch it if you haven’t already and want to. Just for the craft. Or rewatch it if you have already seen it.

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