Rear Window

The first thing you see in Alfred Hithcock's "Rear Window" are curtains rising in Jimmy Stewart's apartment as the credits role up. This is a nice little wink as to what the movie is about. "Rear Window" is a movie about the movies, the window curtains are like the ones you see on a movie screen. Jimmy Stewart is an audience member, he's stuck in a wheel chair due to a broken leg, and he spends his time looking outside his window at the lives of other people. He can't help himself, he becomes somewhat involved with these little stories happening outside. It's the same feeling we get when we go to the movies.

"Rear Window" was the first Hitchcock movie I ever saw, I was in my teens and back then Jimmy Stewart was my hero; he was the actor I loved to see because there was something about his gangly, likable persona I could always identify with. I saw "Rear Window" for the first time on a hot summer day not unlike it was in the film. It was the perfect summer movie for such an occasion, it was fun, frivolous, and involving. I didn't really think of "Rear Window" as much more than great entertainment after that first time, but as years past, I found myself revisiting it over and over.

On one level "Rear Window" does work as frivolous entertainment, Stewart plays L.B. Jefferies, a photographer who after risking his life for a photo is confined to a wheelchair. He spends his days looking out at the neighbours. His two constant visitors are his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) and his gorgeous socialite girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly). There is much drama unfolding in Jefferies backyard including a newlywed couple, a lonely woman looking for love, a sexy sociable ballet dancer, and music composer. Inside the apartment is a funny little romantic comedy as Jefferies must decide wheather or not to marry Lisa who is madly in love with him, but he wants to keep his independence.

Everything comes to a tipping point when Jefferies suspects his neighbour Thorwald has killed his wife. Together Jefferies, Lisa, and Stella become amateur sleuths as they try to figure out what happened to Thorwald's wife. All in all, these nice little elements makes "Rear Window" one of the most entertaining Hollywood movies ever made. It may be a murder mystery but it remains a light one, in fact after revisiting the film again, I was amazed at how Hitchcock takes such such dark subject matter and turn it into such a lively entertaining picture.

But "Rear Window" is more than this, it also could be thought of as the way we view movies, and a way we could view Hitchcock films in general. Jimmy Stewart for us is the audience within a movie, he sees something outside his window, whether it's a murder or two people kissing and he reacts to it, as we do when we are watching a film. In short, it's the basic primal instinct we all get when we are watching something from a distance. We are all observers in one sense or another, sometimes we feel guilty about it, sometimes we think nothing of it, but it seems to be in our DNA to know what's going on around us. Isn't this why we go to the movies in the first place? Movies are meant for us to empathize with a person or a situation, they can even make us feel like we are living different lives.

"Rear Window" does have an out of body experience for me, where I sometimes get the feeling I'm inside Jimmy Stewart's apartment, experiencing what he's experiencing, and in a way that's the ultimate escape, that's what movies can do even more than plays or books, there's something about seeing moving objects reflected in front of us that makes it all the more real.

When I watch "Rear Window" I actually don't want it to end, I know there's some point where they are getting close to the figuring out the murder, but I know once they do, the film will be over, and I will be sad. This is why people still watch Hitchcock movies, and why even people who don't usually watch classic films still watch Hitchcock movies because he knew exactly what people wanted. Basically in movies we want to be involved in some way or another, you can take away all the computer generated special effects from today and if you are not involved then there's nothing there, there's nothing to remember.

Maybe that's why movies sometimes feel like a memory or a dream, we look at them as if they are from another life we lived before. We were lifted out of our stupor or mundane ordinary life and experienced something unexpected or exciting. I know when I go to the movies, I sometimes feel more alive in a movie theatre than I do in real life, if that makes any sense.

"Rear Window" is among Hitchcock's top three or five greatest films, he was a master at what he did because he understood what cinema could do, how it could be felt, and how it could be experienced. His films are the kind of films that remind me why I fell in love with the movies, and why they continue to haunt me. In some ways they are as an entertainment, but they touch something far more primal and personal in me that has become such a big part of my life.