Rear Window

Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock, 1954, 112 minutes
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L.B. Jeffries, a successful action photographer, is stuck in his apartment as he recuperates from a broken leg. Jeffries is entertained by his nurse, Stella, his picture perfect girl friend, Lisa Carol Fremont, and, when they're not around, the neighbors' windows he sees from his perch. Rear Window is a film full of the story-within-a-story conceit, with each neighbor's window framing some kind of romantic story. In one window, Miss Lonely Hearts, in another Mr. Lonely Hearts, and in still another Miss Bomb Shell. Then there are the Newly-Weds, the Nesters, and the Quarrelers. In today's terms, Jeffries' view is a veritable cineplex of romance films where Jeffries can sneak from one film to the next just by turning his head.

The real story in Rear Window is whether Mr. Jeffries and Miss Fremont can make their own romance work. Hitchcock reveals Jeffries' rational conerns about marrying Fremont in Jeffries' dialogue with the maternal and practical nurse Stella. Hitchcock reveals Jeffries' emotional concerns about marrying Fremont with all those romance stories playing in the adjoining windows. When the Newly Weds spend days with the shades pulled, we know Jeffries can't wait for a roll in the hay with Fremont. When the Quarrelers have it out, we know Jeffries doesn't want to stay married past the honeymoon. When Miss Lonely Hearts drinks away her misery, we know Jeffries doesn't want to end up without a relationship.

Rear Window works on an entirely different level, as well. As a viewer of all these lives, Jeffries begins to interpret what he sees. When he sees, for instance, the lonely piano player with another man in the room (this is where Hitchcock makes his appearance in Rear Window, coincidentally), is it just a couple of guys listening to show tunes or is it the piano player's secret romance?

On a dark and stormy night, when Jeffries sees strange activities at the Quarrlers' apartment followed by the absence of Mrs. Quarreler, he presumes the worst. The drama that drives Jeffries and Fremont closer together is the discovery of what really happened at the Quarrelers' apartment. But along the way to that discovery, Jeffries asks whether looking into his neighbors' windows is moral, not because of what he's seen, but because of the conclusions he's drawn from what he's seen. It's the photographer's dilemma: does the picture show anything more than what is in the picture?

What turns out to be more important to Jeffries than understanding what he saw that dark and stormy night is how Fremont reacts. At first she hesitates to believe Jeffries' sinister conclusion, but then she grows to become his most ardent supporter. Jeffries realizes that, as foreign as Fremont's Park Avenue grace is to his rough-and-tumble correspondent's demeanor, she can sleuth just as well as he. What Jeffries and Fremont discover about that dark and stormy night turns out to be their love for each other.





Roger Ebert's Review.
N.Y. Times' Review.