Rear Window (Universal Legacy
Series) starring James Stewart,
Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma
Ritter, Raymond Burr
A Gift Is A Gift
Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred
Hitchcocks classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its
story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonists 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 shes 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 thats more interested in the implications of Jeffs sentinel perspective.
We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given
generic names by Jeff, even as hes drawn into their lives) he, and we,
watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeffs
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
couples own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through
the various neighbors lives. At minimum, Hitchcocks skill at making us
accomplices to Jeffs 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 directors brilliance as a visual storyteller. --
Sam Sutherland
I teach this work as the pinnacle of Hitchcocks oeuvre in a film class, and I
can literally watch it back-to-back, once every 10 weeks, and not get tired
of it. It is so fantastically done on all fronts that it holds up beyond nearly all
other popular films in the history of cinema.
This is a well-done DVD with a truly fascinating doc on the second disk
that gives all kinds of great inside information about not only the work itself,
but Hitchcocks methods. My caveat is for the DVD transfer. One of my
students worked for years at a restoration facility and when I showed him
this DVD, he made disgusted noises at the cheap quality of the digital
transfer. Apparently this is the way its done nowadays because studios are
too cheap to go in by hand and restore 35mm, so the pixillation is
noticeable during dolly and panning shots, as are the fluctuations in color.
However, this isnt exactly a posh Blu-Ray, and I suppose we should be
thankful the Hitchcock 5 exist in the public domain at all, so 5 stars it is. :)
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