Just saw “Rear Window” for the first time. What a stunning, amazing movie!
Actually – hard as this is to believe – as of a few days ago I had never seen any of Hitchcock’s movies. Now I’ve seen “A Shadow of a Doubt,” which was wonderful (and surprisingly feminist in some ways), and “The Lady Vanishes,” which didn’t do as much for me.
But “Rear Window” was so perfect that I have a hard time imagining any of his other movies will match it, for me. As well as being incredibly cleverly written, it has a lot of elements that I’ve always found appealing: Storytelling constructed around a severe technical limitation (in this case, that nearly all of the story is told using shot angles that Jimmy Stewart’s character could see from his window), a claustrophobic setup, the close urban neighborhood, and the comic-strip like storytelling of the neighbors lives viewed in panel borders (aka windows).
If you’re familiar with “Rear Window,” I’d recommend taking three minutes and watching this amazing version of the entire movie as a single panoramic view.
Bechdel test report: All three movies pass the Bechdel test, although “Shadow of a Doubt” just barely passes (because of a conversation between the protagonist and a grumpy female librarian). I was also struck by the “no one will believe you, you’re a woman!” theme in all three movies – even in Rear Window (where the male protagonist is also disbelieved), the police detective shows a special disdain for Grace Kelly’s testimony, and comments that he’s never heard a theory from a woman that hasn’t been a waste of time.
The film was shot on an amazingly elaborate set. The studio actually removed the floor between two levels of soundstage and constructed a real “neighborhood.” Then Hitchcock orchestrated the action so several scenes (or parts thereof) could go on simultaneously.
Every time I see the film, I notice details I missed before.
On the final day of filming, as Hitchcock, Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart left the soundstage, it is said they turned around to look sadly, one more time, on the set where they’d spent so much time over the past months. And that they felt as if they were closing the doors on a very real world.
I agree that Rear Window was done very well, but unlike many other Hitchcock movies, the story is entirely straightforward. I would have been more impressed if it turned out that his neighbor did indeed have something to hide, but it wasn’t quite what Jimmy Stewart’s character thought it was.
There are many famous Hitchcock movies I haven’t seen, but I would highly recommend “Vertigo” and “Suspicion”. (I’ve also seen a stage production of “Dial M for Murder” that was very good, too.)
Incidentally, my parents have a VHS collection of several very old Hitchcock black-and-white movies – including “The Lady Vanishes”, “The 39 Steps”, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934), and “Saboteur” – and found every one of them disappointing.
*they found
If you want to see what the cultural view was of trusting women’s judgment, watch the (remake) Man Who Knew Too Much. I won’t spoil it, but it contains a scene that contemporary audiences (at least in Northern California) can hardly watch, which Hitchcock clearly thought was perfectly acceptable. And, like most Hitchcock, it’s also a great movie.
And I second your love of Rear Window. You have many treats in store.
Rear Window is one of my favorite movies of all time. I’m so glad you’ve seen it and that you loved it!
Just think of all the parodies for which you now have context!
Do you know the work of Cornell Woolrich, whose story it was based on? Lots of great novels.
Goodness what took you so long? :-) I should talk…I just saw the film for the first time about five years ago. I thought how in the hell did I miss this gem! I saw it on TCM and then had to go out and get the DVD.
I think by the time I saw it the print had been restored as it had aged badly.
history of the restoration of Rear Window
Yes, Rear Window, definitely one of the best films every made by anyone! The set was the largest ever built at the time and the actors that played the neighbors were all told that they were filming movies within a larger movie which I think worked out very well. I thought they and Hitchcock did a good job bringing “types” (representing human relationships including marriage in different forms) and fleshing them out as much as they could given like you said, the severely limited POV angles.
Yeah I had similar problems with Shadow of a Doubt (same scenes) though that’s one of my favorites of A.H. too and I definitely found feminist elements. It was a treat seeing Hume Cronyn and Macdonald Carey (patriarch, Days of Our Lives) in their younger days. Cronyn’s wife of course, Jessica Tandy appeared in The Birds, a film that though I liked visually and in some other ways, bugged the hell out of me.
I also liked his rendition of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution though he said in interviews that was mostly Billy Wilder’s film.
I’m going to see Vertigo next time it’s on. And I didn’t really like 39 Steps either.
I still see new things each time. I think that having it turn out to be what he thought worked. Everyone else including the detective was telling him all the other possibilities and the “mystery” was more of a plot device to explore the film’s deeper themes. There were some surprises for me with some of the resolutions including with “Miss Torso” in her last scene.
I love Jimmy Stewart. Met him at a charity relay event before he died. Very nice man.
Clearly this reveals something fascinating about my personality: I’ve never given a damn about Rear Window.
I was first exposed to Hitchcock in college, first attending a midnight showing of Vertigo, and later North by Northwest. I was hooked! And everything since then has been kind of a disappointment.
I really don’t give a rat’s butt about the vignettes throughout the apartment building; to me they just bogged down the plot. Which barely exists. I never really thought there was enough information to prompt my suspicions. And I never regarded the villain as sufficiently villainous as to make the prospect of confronting him all that scary.
I also didn’t really get into Torn Curtain, a thriller about breaking into, and out of, Communist East Germany. I knew intellectually that the East Germans were really bad guys, but I just didn’t feel it. Maybe this is one of those “You had to be there” movies.
(For what it’s worth, I also didn’t get into E.T. Again, I never understood why people felt so threatened. Who knows? Maybe I just lack adrenaline or something.)
Admittedly, it’s been decades since I saw Rear Window. Perhaps I’d now have a better appreciation for all the stuff that makes the movie famous.
The 39 Steps is excellent, although I don’t think it passes the Bechdel Test.