Yes, Perverts Solve Crimes Too!

Recently I turned 21, and at 21 I was disgusted that I'd never seen Casablanca or Citizen Kane or even a Hitchcock movie. So I expressed my displeasure at my oldest friend and we decided since everyone in Brisbane (and that's Australia by the way, not Austria or the HQ of this blasted website) has nicked off to Europe for winter we'd make them all jealous by watching all these movies we should've seen.

So we started with Rear Window.


It's pretty neat. And as an equally neat diversion, when you search for "Rear Window" on Epinions its Related Deals list contains nothing but Jogging Strollers. How the two are related I'm not entirely sure, but it was amusing nonetheless. Almost like the good ol' days of "People Who Like Cabbage Patch Dolls also liked... Abortions!".

Everyone knows the basic premise of this movie, even if they've only seen the Simpsons parody. Jimmy Stewart has a badly broken leg and to pass the time he is a bit of a voyeur on his neighbours, a wacky assortment in Downtown Chelsea who could only exist in a film. His particular fave is Miss Torso, the ballet dancer who spends a large portion of the movie bending over in skimpy hipster pants.

One of the more striking scenes for me is when Stewart is fascinated by Miss Lonelyheart setting up for a romantic dinner, as Grace Kelly vainly tries to get him to notice her setting up for their romantic dinner right behind him.

Grace Kelly is entirely luminescent in this movie (I've always wanted to use that word in a review but as I've never really seen a Cate Blanchett movie I haven't been able to use it until now) in a variety of dazzlingly wonderful outfits (Egads I am so gay sometimes). Thelma Ritter often steals the scene as Stewart's wisecracking nurse.

What makes this an incredible, not just a great, movie in my opinion is Hitchcock's superb sense of pace. He spends a good fifth of the movie building up the sense of tedium and boredom you know Stewart's character is feeling and when things do start to happen the viewer does act like Stewart's detective friend (Wendell Corey)- is this really happening or is it the overactive imagination of an undernourished mind?

Along the same line, Hitchcock directed the entire movie from Stewart's 'apartment' on what was for the time one the largest indoor sets ever built. Every shot but one (see if you can pick it! heh) was filmed from the same apartment. This heightens the sense of claustrophobia which must have been felt by a character like Jeffries- use to globetrotting around the world in exotic locales.

One has to admit that Stewart's fixation on the murder does approach something slightly frightening- ...you know if someone came in here, they wouldn't believe what they'd see? You and me with long faces plunged into despair because we find out a man didn't kill his wife. We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known.. He becomes so fixated on what at this stage is only a possible murder he fails to notice Miss Lonelyheart making preparations to kill herself.

Slightly creepily, Hitchcock perhaps predicted our fixation with real tv- Stella for instance says- We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.

The important subplot of this movie is the romance between Kelly and Stewart. Kelly hears wedding bells, Stewart does not. This idea of whether marriage is the final goal of romance is a recurring thought. And what does Hitchcock think? Well there are two other married couples in the film-The Newlyweds who spend the whole movie doing what newlyweds do best and The Thorwalds. A wedding ring becomes key evidence.

One tends to wonder whether Hitchcock intended all the subtext in this movie or whether as we have convinced ourselves of his genius we look for it to justify our belief. Doubtless he intended some, and some are products of our own god worship.

Whether you buy the Hitchcock Genius idea or not, this is at its core an absolute ripper of a movie.