During a heatwave, LB 'Jeff' Jefferies is chafing in his Greenwich Village apartment: a magazine photographer, in a few days he will finally have a plaster cast removed from his left leg after being injured on assignment, and his socialite fiancée Lisa is pressing him about marriage although he refuses to sacrifice his globe-trotting. Bored, Jeff starts watching his unknown neighbours around the large tenement courtyard...
One night he hears a woman scream from one of the windows, and starts watching - first with binoculars, then his zoom-lens camera - the apartment of Lars Thorwold, a salesman whose bedridden wife has gone.
Jeff slowly manages to convince Lisa and his insurance company nurse Stella that Thorwald has murdered his wife but his NY detective friend remains unconvinced.
With Thorwald obviously about to leave, Jeff allows Lisa and Stella to put themselves in harm's way, but this leads Thorwald to Jeff's door.
Shelf or charity shop? Spying on the other DVDs in my storage
box REAR WINDOW is one to keep. Filming on a huge sound stage, Hitchcock keeps the action centred mostly in Jeff's small apartment making us co-voyeurs along with his hero. A masterpiece in thriller storytelling, Hitchcock also shades James Stewart's everyman screen persona to one of vague unlikeability - a forefunner of his morally ambiguous 'Scottie' in VERTIGO. Grace Kelly is a sparkling presence as Lisa, mirrored perfectly by Thelma Ritter's astringent nurse Stella. It is interesting how Hitchcock makes his killer Raymond Burr almost sympathetic in his final confrontation with Stewart - a mix of threat, helplessness and bafflement. John Michael Hayes' excellent script is based on a Cornell Woolrich short story.
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