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 For some reason the back of the DVD claims that Jimmy Stewart's name is J.B.
Jeffries instead of L.B. Jeffries. If I said it before, I'm going to say it
again: if you are going to write the copy for the back of the box, please
watch the film and pay attention. L.B. is a photographer who is laid up in a
wheelchair because of a broken leg and he becomes "obsessed" with watching what
the neighbors are up to. Soon he suspects that a salesman has murdered his
wife and he "enlists the help of his glamourous socialite girlfriend (Grace
Kelly) to investigate the highly suspicious chain of events." 1954, 115 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
It doesn't take a Brainiac to figure out that all of us at heart are peepers.
I'm sure you don't need me telling you that since you probably check out your
co-workers' computers, read your sibling's diary and secretly video tape your
guests when they are in your bathroom. Heck, I ain't gonna bullcrap you, I'm a
bit of a voyeur myself. In fact, just the other week when I was laid off from
the shoe factory, I was laying around my trailer and I had myself my own Rear
Window action going on. See, I've got these neighbors that live in the trailer
next to me. As far as I can make out, they got two little boys, a mom, and a
dad. Now these little kids are the types that hang around my shed playing with
matches, so I know I gots to keep an eye on them. But the parents of these
little hellions is what intrigues me of late. See, she's got a job during the
day and he seems to have a job at night. Now, I noticed that one morning after
she left, a strange car pulled up and stopped at their house. The husband was
already home from his night job and it sure wasn't the wife since she had left
in their black Mustang. I kept an eye on things for most of the day and I
recalled that I had seen this mysterious car before in their driveway - during
the day when the wife was gone! What was going here? Was there some type of
affair going on? Did he kill his wife and bury her out behind the swing set in
the kids' sandbox? Is that why all the neighborhood cats take craps in it? It
was a mystery that had me peeking out from my shades for days. At least
until I remembered that this family used to have an old pick up that I didn't
see anymore and then one night I saw the whole family pile into this strange
car and drive off. It was obvious what had happened. He had killed her, put
her in the pickup, sank it in the lake outside of town and was dressing up his
girlfriend to look like the mom and tricking the kids by taking everyone out to
dinner! Either that or they got themselves a new car. Also one other time at
some other trailer I lived at I looked out my
window and saw a guy take off his pants. But that was once back in the 80s and
I was really drunk. So as you can see, the themes that Alfred Hitchcock
explores in Rear Window still resonate to this day. At least with people that
don't have jobs and/or cable TV to keep them occupied.  Jimmy Stewart plays a photographer with a broken leg and spends all his time
off of work recuperating by laying around in his wheelchair and checking out
what the neighbors in his apartment complex are up to. They are a disparate
lot, each neighbor defined by the thing that Jimmy can see them doing. There's
Miss Torso who spends her days in skimpy attire and dances around, though all
this dancing doesn't seem to get her in any better shape. There's Miss
Lonelyhearts who spends her time making dinner for imaginary dinner guests (is
her real name Eleanor Rigby?). There's the newlyweds that hump all the time.
There's the woman with a hearing aid, a songwriter who walks around in too
tight blue shorts without a shirt to cover his 1950s gut, and then there's
Raymond Burr sporting a psychotic white hair do who has a wife that he seems to
fight with often, at least he does before she mysteriously disappears.
Surprisingly enough for a guy that sits around all day ogling the neighbors,
L.B. Jeffries has an uptown Park Avenue girlfriend named Lisa and played by
Grace Kelley. She comes over to his apartment frequently so that L.B. can
treat her like dirt and tell her how she could never handle the lifestyle of a
rough and ready photojournalist that gets his kicks peeping on people. She
wants to marry him, but he is reluctant to do so and complains to his
nurse/masseuse that his girlfriend is just too perfect. That's another thing I
need to mention. This nurse shows up all the time to give him rubdowns for no
good reason. Supposedly she is provided by the insurance company, but what kind
of plan does he have that allows him to have nurse visit him in his home, pour
baby oil on him and rub his flabby bod all over, when all he has is a busted
leg? Doesn't sound like Blue Cross to me. She looks a little like her name
might be Ratchet, but the nurse actually goes by Stella or something. She
listens to L.B.'s diatribes against the perfection of his girl friend and
pretty much plays the part of the audience by telling him to quit being such a
tool. L.B. is a voyeur beyond his obsession with the neighbors. He takes
pictures by trade and you can see that he has very little interest in taking an
active role in his own personal life, preferring to distance himself from any
lasting ties to his girlfriend, asking her at one point, "what's wrong with the
status quo?" The nature of the voyeur is non-involvement and therefore no
risk. This is precisely how he is dealing with Lisa and his job and his
interest
in the neighbors merely reflects his fear of actively participating in anything
real.  One hot night, not long after we meet the dysfunctional and emotionally
closed-off L.B., he wakes up periodically and sees some very strange things
going on across the way in the apartment of Lars Thorwald (Burr). What could
possibly arouse L.B.'s suspicion that Lars is a psychopathic killer besides the
obviously psychopathic name of Lars Thorwald? Well, it's around 2:00 in the
morning and Lars makes several trips out of his apartment with this big old
briefcase he uses to lug his samples around in (he's some type of jewelry
salesman, I think). Later we see Lars leaving with some woman. After this, we
don't see Mrs. Thorwald anymore, and the more L.B. observes the goings in the
Thorwald's apartment, the more he becomes convinced that she has met an
untimely demise at the hands of the Tor Johnson-sized Raymond Burr. He tells
Lisa of his concerns and soon she is watching along with him, rapidly co-opted
in this whole peeping gig by L.B.'s obsessive enthusiasm. She may have just
been trying to get closer to him by showing an interest in a hobby of his, but
whatever the reason, this uptown girl suddenly transforms into a regular Nancy
Drew, offering her feminine insight into the details they've observed in an
effort to prop up L.B.'s story. Some other peculiar things are noticed,
including the odd fact that Lars is packing up a really big knife and saw.
L.B. and Lisa discuss at length about the significance that Mrs. Thorwald would
leave her apartment for a long trip without her favorite handbag, wedding ring,
and make-up. They also question why Lars was calling someone up, apparently to
ask advice about some jewelry. Finally, L.B. calls in his old war buddy, a
detective with the NYPD named Doyle. L.B. explains his suspicions to Doyle and
Doyle is a bit reluctant to haul Lars in on a murder beef, because he was seen
by a neighbor making a call about a ring or something. He agrees to look into
it and later tells L.B. that there was a postcard in Lars' mail from his wife
saying that she was having a high old time in the country and that contrary to
idle neighborhood gossip, she was not rooming with Jimmy Hoffa in the endzone
at Giants Stadium. He also tells L.B. that Mrs. Thorwald picked up her really
big trunk at the train station and that the only thing in the trunk were her
clothes. L.B., having seen such hit movies such as Double Indemnity isn't
quite ready to let go of his theory, claiming that no one can say that it was
the real Mrs. Thorwald that was on that train. Eventually though, L.B.'s
fervent belief that his neighbor killed his wife dissipates. Well, at least
until this cute little doggie that hangs out in the courtyard turns up dead
near Lars' garden. 
Everyone in the neighborhood turns out to check out the dead dog. Everyone
that is except for Lars. Lisa immediately seizes on this and states that
"maybe the dog knew too much!" Indeed! By this time, L.B. has also roped his
nurse into the his little Clue Club. They now take the offensive with a series
of maneuvers to smoke out Lars as the killer he is. First L.B. has Lisa slip a
letter under Lars' door that says something like "we know you're a big smelly
wife killer." Then they watch as he reacts. Next they decide they need to
finish Fido's job and dig up the rest of the garden. Close examination of a
photo, L.B. took earlier shows the flowers are shorter than they used to be, so
Lisa and Stella go down to dig up Lars' garden, once L.B. makes an anonymous
call to Lars to tell him to meet him at the bar, so that Lars will be gone when
all this excavating goes on. They go down and dig stuff up and can't find
anything, so Lisa takes it upon herself to climb the fire escape and sneak into
Lars' house while he's out. She finds the handbag and then Lars comes home and
starts whooping up on her, before shutting the lights out. L.B. calls the cops
and then we all have a nerve-racking wait to see if the cops can get there
before she gets killed while her boyfriend can do nothing but watch (which we
all know is his forte). The cops show up and take her away, but not before she
covertly shows L.B. from across the courtyard that she is wearing Mrs.
Thorwald's wedding ring. This wasn't covert enough because Lars notices it and
then notices who she's trying to show it to and you get that great moment when
Burr looks across the courtyard right at Stewart and realizes that he is the
one that saw him do all this stuff. Later, L.B. gets a call from Thorwald
which confirms where he is located and the next thing you know the lights are
off in his apartment and Lars shows up and tries to kill him as L.B. wards him
off by flashing flash bulbs in his face. Eventually the cops bust in just as
Lars is dumping L.B. out the window and he's captured, but not before Stewart
falls. He gets caught by some people, but lands hard and the movie ends by
showing that both his legs are now broken. Rear Window is an exceptional film, though it still probably sits behind Psycho and Vertigo in Hitch's oeuvre. It doesn't have the shocking bit of plotting that Psycho does (Was it possible to kill off a main character before this movie?)
or the twisted obsessiveness of Stewart's other great movie he made with Big
Al, but it is a triumph in terms of technique. The entire movie is about
distance and how the safety we have as long we're are merely the viewer is
endangered once we become part of the action. The entire movie was shot on one
set and when you watch it, you'll notice a couple of things about the tricks
Hitchcock used to achieve this voyeuristic vibe that runs throughout the film.
First off, every single shot either takes place in Stewart's apartment or is
shot from his apartment. At no time does the camera ever leave Stewart's
apartment, just like Stewart's character. It's really the ultimate comment
about moviegoers - Hitchcock made a movie about what it is to be a viewer, an
audience that gets its jollies vicariously, with little danger to themselves.
Of course he also tells us that there really is a danger, because at some point
in time you get so wrapped up in what's playing out, that you can't help but
involve yourself in someway. Stewart is like this, calling up Doyle and
becoming tangentially
involved in the little drama he obsesses about, but
eventually he is taking an active role, making calls, writing letters, sending
out his proxies to literally dig up the dirt on this guy. That's when the
drama that was so far away all this time shows up in his doorway and he
becomes part of the drama. You can't watch something like this, you can't
continuously look into someone's life without becoming involved in some way.
The mere fact that you were interested enough to stare in the first place is a
kind of involvement. There's no such thing as being uninvolved. The other neat
thing he did with this movie is related to all the shots from Stewart's
apartment. There aren't any close-ups to speak off. You can clearly see what
all these people are up to, but you really can't see their faces too distinctly,
and more importantly you can't hear what they are saying. The only time you
get a good look at anyone is if L.B. uses his binoculars or zoom lens. This
reduces everyone and their actions to something as filtered through L.B.'s
viewpoint. There's a total lack of context to everything you're viewing, so
you can't know for sure what you're seeing really means. You're not over
there, you can't hear what's being said, so even though you have a level of
knowledge as to their actions, that knowledge is imperfect, adding mystery and
confusion to what you see. You can live through your observations of what
someone else is doing, but it is a false kind of living. Hitchcock played with
using the camera as way to put forth his themes as much as with his characters
and plots in other films, most notably in Rope, which was supposed to look like it was shot in one long take (I've always
thought the result was a bit of a failure and that that movie was a bit of a
bore), but he really hits the mark this time. Of course, the downside to all
this forced distance (including that of its main character - you say he's a
jerk, I say he's distant) is that you don't really feel as much for these
characters and situations on any kind of emotional level. It's all a game,
just like the characters think of it as it's happening around them. I would
submit, that rather than being a sign of some shortcoming of the movie, that it
proves exactly the point the movie was trying to make: living your life
through what others do is exciting, no doubt about it, but ultimately an empty
and by its nature impersonal and therefore less than wholly satisfactory
experience. But as for the film itself, make no mistake, it was something well
worth peeping in on.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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