Rear Window
by Alfred Hitchcock
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Product details
Actor: Grace Kelley, James StewartDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Special Edition
Running Time: 113 minutes
Release Date: 2001-03-06
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Paramount Pictures
Studio: Paramount Pictures
VHS Movie Reviews of Rear Window
Movie Review: No Dream Sequence PLEASE
Summary: 5 Stars
The Dream Sequence referred to in the last review was never part of the original film. It was inserted by local television stations in a lame attempt to recapitulate the plot for those who had tuned in late. Exactly the kind of butchering that should be prevented by copywright laws. The current restoration is completely faithful to the original film.Movie Review: Restorers' Error
Summary: 5 Stars
Restorers' Error
What the restorers of Rear Window don't know is that there exist two dream sequences in the first part of the movie.
The first takes place after Grace Kelly leaves, and James Stewart has heard the scream from across the courtyard. Thelma Ritter, Grace Kelly, and the courtyard are shown while dialogue from Thelma Ritter's argument with Stewart about Lisa, and Lisa's argument with Stewart, are heard with an echo. The composer's new song is heard.
The second takes place after Stewart has waked up and noticed the salesman taking a suitcase out during the rain, coming back, and taking the suitcase out again. The composer's song is heard over the image which shows the salesman arguing with his wife, the artist neighbor telling the salesman he is giving the plants too much water, Thelma Ritter saying "I've got a nose for trouble, I can smell it ten miles away." Then Ritter says, "I can smell trouble right in this apartment. First you break your leg, then you start looking out the window, seeing things you shouldn't see," while we see the wife catching the salesman in the other room talking to his girlfriend on the phone, then Ritter saying "We've become a race of Peeping Toms, what we ought to do is get outside ourselves and look in once in a while. The New York sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the workhouse. There are no windows in the workhouse. You know, in the old days they used to put people's eyes out with a red-hot poker. Any of those worth a red-hot poker?" as we see the salesman carrying the suitcase out into the rain.
When Stewart wakes up the apartment complex is dark, the shades are drawn. He sees Miss Torso come home from her evening out. Then he sits up as he sees the salesman coming back for a second time with the suitcase.
Each sequence is introduced by a rippling of the image of Stewart's sleeping face, and his face is superimposed over the dream images.
These dream sequences articulate the major themes of the movie: the dubious morality of voyeurism, Stewart's sexual ambivalence about Grace Kelly and his interest in other women, the salesman's conflict with his wife, Thelma Ritter's attempts to persuade Stewart to come back to a normal way of living. The salesman's problems with his wife are an analog to Stewart's problems with Grace Kelly. The core of voyeurism is sexuality, and this is shown over and over again in the movie. The motive for the salesman's murder of his wife is another woman. Miss Lonelyhearts' attempted suicide is because of her failed relationships with men. Miss Torso is fighting off suitors and trying to save herself for her husband, who, in a comic moment at the end of the movie, returns from military service more interested in food than in his sensual wife. The newlyweds keep their shades drawn because they are making love.
The restorers should have researched the film more carefully. Neither restored transfer includes these dream sequences as "deleted scenes."
Movie Review: "We've become a race of Peeping Toms"
Summary: 5 Stars
Every film is an artifact of its era and "Rear Window" is no different so those expecting slam bang action like they see in "The Matrix" should look elsewhere. All of that said, "Rear Window" still stands tall as a film classic because of the themes, artistry of Hitchcock, the performances and the witty dialogue that we hear in the film. Unseen except for rare TV performances in the early 60's and rare revival house showings, "Rear Window" looks extremely good in its DVD presentation although clearly no complete restoration was done here like was done for "Vertigo" (but "Rear Window" wasn't in as bad a shape as "Vertigo" either). This edition looks better than the previous DVD (although it should be noted it's the same transfer as what was in the Hitchcock boxed set release four years ago)with a nice anamorphic transfer. Some people seem to think that film grain is a bad thing--it's not it's just how the film looks and "Rear Window" is no exception. Expecting this to look like a film produced in 2008 isn't realistic and it won't--but it still looks darn good.
Extras are as follows: The extras that came with the boxed set as well as those from the previous single DVD release have been ported over to this release as well. We get two new delicious extras--a theme appropriate episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" with the Hitchcock directed episode ""Mr. Blanchard's Secret" and also excerpts from the interview Traffaut did with Hitchcock for his book in the early 60's.
Other extras: Audio commentary by author John Falwell, "Rear Window Ethics", Interview with Writer John Michael Hayes", "Pure Cinema: Through the Eyes of the Master", "Breaking Barriers: The Sound of Hitchcock", production notes, theatrical trailers, photo gallery, audio interview excerpts from Truffaut's interviews with Hitchcock,
A plot synopsis is below for those intereested:
Spying through a glass darkly (his camera lens), L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) believes a neighbor (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. His evidence is circumstanial at best and the wheelchair bound photographer has to convince his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly)of the crime. In the process he puts his friends in harm's way. Hitch laces his film with more than a touch of humor and irony pulling this thriller together as it's L.B.'s peeping that reveals the ugly underneath--revealing something unsavory about himself as well without him truly realizing it.
Hitchcock manages to do more with less than just about any director out there. Using a single soundstage, a small cast and the witty script by John Michael Hayes, Hitchcock crafts one of his classic films. "Rear Window" has aged yes but it looks, sounds and plays remarkably well fifty four years after it's original theatrical release. Highly recommended.
Movie Review: "Hand Me the Binoculars, Please"
Summary: 5 Stars
While Psycho is my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rear Window is a close second, and it is to my mind the classiest suspense movie he made. Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly provide that classiness. Cool and brazen Grace, subtlely provoking Jimmy at every turn, knowing he is stuck helpless with a broken leg in a cast, while she cavorts about getting too close to the murderer, and enjoying his nervousness. The murderer is played by Ramond Burr in a strange role for him--but he is very scary. In a stroke of genius, Hitchcock provides us a cutaway view of the appartments across the way and the dramas going on inside of them. We start getting invested in the stories of the inhabitants. Thelma Ritter adds something to the movie that it could not do without. As Stewart's private duty nurse, her no-nonsence philosophies of life are very necessary for thorough scene development. I never get tired of watching this movie. Barbara Bel Geddes is also very good as Jimmy's secretary.Movie Review: Overrated
Summary: 2 Stars
Some films show their age, and others do not. Despite its reputation as a classic of great filmmaking, Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window, unfortunately, shows its age far too much. No, it's certainly not a bad film, by any standard, and is a pretty good one, but it's not one of Hitchcock's best, much less a great film, nor deserving of any place in the Top 100 Films lists of the last few years. Technically, it deserves many plaudits, but what really fails is the screenplay, written originally by John Michael Hayes for a radio play, and adapted from a short story by Cornell Woolrich. Yes, one can suspend disbelief from night till day comes, but the whole idea that a man would murder his wife and cut up her body all in front of an open window is sheerly implausible, even back in the 1950s New York milieu the film takes place in. Even one of the film's characters, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) comments on that fact, but it's not with irony, which only highlights the film's greatest failing- its implausibility.
Now, there are genres where the suspension of disbelief is absolutely essential. For example, one of my favorite films from childhood, the original Planet Of The Apes (1968) requires a great suspension of disbelief, far more so than Rear Window does. After all, the Charlton Heston character, Colonel Taylor, a veteran trained astronaut and scientist, goes throughout the whole film not recognizing the sun and moon, the constellations, the unlikely evolutionary odds that humans and apes could evolve anywhere but Earth, and that the apes speak English, no less! It's not until he sees the wreck of the Statue Of Liberty that he realizes he's back on our world. I was four or five when I first saw the film, and knew it was Earth a minute or two after the astronauts arrived on the Planet Of The Apes. Perhaps too closely studying books on geology and science destroys a youthful ability to suspend disbelief, but the rest of the film was so brilliantly satirical that the implausibilities were minor solecisms. In short, there is no story unless we accept these liberties with common sense, including the fact that the astronauts could be frozen in suspended animation for two eons. It's an all or none proposition- accept, or walk out of the theater. Genres that depend on the implausible- like sci fi and horror, demand such of their audience, and once given it's foolish to quibble over things like time travel, faster than light speed, aliens, modern dinosaurs, ghosts, atomic age mutants, or the like....The plot is well known.... While not a great film overall, Rear Window is a technically great film. The camera work by cinematographer Robert Burks is first rate, and the film goes over many standard Hitchcock themes such as voyeurism- especially apt in this cyberworld of 24/7 voyeurism, marriage as a horror, and challenging technical restrictions, as in Lifeboat and Rope. There are many small moments in the film that work for effect- such as pure mise-en-scene shots of Jeff or the neighbors doing minor things unrelated to the main tale. And, there is some comedy, such as after Jeff is tossed out the window, and Thorwald is arrested, Stella comments to the cops, `I don't want any part of it', when asked about assisting in the search for Anna Thorwald's body. Still, none of the many pluses of the film are enough to lift the film up from a good, solid period piece, for Rear Window's reputation is based largely upon its claim to being a slice of `realism'. It's not. It's far closer to melodrama with its reliance on coincidences and implausibilities- not to mention the very sexism of the premise that a woman is so predictable that even her murder can be deduced by small deviances from that predictability, to propel the main action along. And melodrama, while it can often be great fun, is almost never great art. Rear Window is vastly overrated, and no exception that proves the rule. It is the rule, and that's a fact no amount of suspended disbelief can alter.
Summary of Rear Window
Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder.Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.
Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbors' lives.
At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland
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