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      • Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache
      • Elevator to the Gallows ('58)
      • Days of Heaven
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      • Incindies (2010)
      • In the Mood For Love (2000)
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    • The 1910's >
      • The Lubitsch German Silents
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      • The Odessa Steps Sequence as Continuing Film History
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      • Becky Sharp (1935)
      • Blonde Crazy
      • Bombshell ('33)
      • The Cheat
      • The Conquerors
      • The Crowd Roars
      • The Divorcee
      • Frank Capra & Barbara Stanwyck: The Evolution of a Romance
      • Heroes for Sale
      • The Invisible Man (1933)
      • L'Atalante (1934)
      • Let Us Be Gay
      • My Man Godfrey
      • No Man of Her Own (1932)
      • Platinum Blonde ('31)
      • Reckless ('35)
      • The Sign of the Cross (1932)
      • The Sin of Nora Moran (1932)
      • True Confession ('37)
      • Virtue ('32)
      • The Women
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      • Casablanca (1942)
      • The Story of Citizen Kane
      • Criss Cross (1949)
      • Double indemnity
      • Jean Arthur in A Foreign Affair
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      • The Maltese Falcon Intro
      • Moonrise (1948)
      • My Gal Sal (1942)
      • Nightmare Alley
      • Notorious Intro ('46)
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      • Pursued (1947)
      • Remember the Night ('40)
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      • The Set-Up ('49)
      • They Won't Believe Me (1947)
      • The Third Man
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      • The Asphalt Jungle Secret Cinema Intro
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Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window (1954)
Director:  Alfred Hitchcock
Starring:  Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr
Studio:  Paramount
​IMDB Rating:  10
click here for a link to my video introduction
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Today I’ll be discussing Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic starring James Stewart & Grace Kelly. Sometimes called the perfect reflection of Hitchcock’s filmmaking career, Rear Window utilizes one man’s subjective point of view to watch his neighbors, much as a filmmaker uses his camera to voyeuristically intrude into the lives of his characters.  Based on a short story from 1942 called “It Had to be Murder”, written by prolific suspense writer Cornell Woolrich, Rear Window was the first film Hitchcock made as a part of 9 picture deal with Paramount that would represent the high point of his storied career.  In a 6 year span beginning with Rear Window’s release, Hitch would go on to make To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North By Northwest & Psycho, all classics in their own right.
 
The original story didn’t include a love interest, but Hitch was intent on working  with Grace Kelly again, after a successful working relationship was born the prior year while making Dial M for Murder.  Kelly turned down a starring role in On the Waterfront to work with Hitchcock for the second of 3 films she starred in for the master of suspense.  Kelly epitomizes the quintessential “icy blonde with the fire inside” that Hitchcock favored in his leading ladies & Lisa Freemont would be the pinnacle of Kelly’s glamorous & idealized characterizations for Hitch. Kelly herself would leave acting 2 years later to become the Princess of Monaco, after having made a scant 11 feature films.
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​Jimmy Stewart would make a total of 4 films with Hitchcock, including 1958’s Vertigo, which has been lauded as the greatest film ever made by an international group of critics & film scholars.  While Hitch often remarked that Cary Grant was his reflection on film, Stewart’s characters more accurately portrayed Hitchcock’s mental & emotional viewpoints, no more so than in the stationary & ultimately impotent L.B. Jeffries of Rear Window & as the psychologically damaged Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo.
 
The supporting cast members are a veritable who’s who of character actors & interesting minor players.  Foremost among them is masseuse/house nurse Stella, played beautifully by 6-time Academy Award nominee Thelma Ritter.  Her part was added in the screenplay as a way of giving voice to Jeff’s inner thoughts about relationships, while also providing Hitchcock’s always present humorous interludes.  For Thorwald, the villain, Hitchcock chose studio heavy Raymond Burr in no small part because he looked enough like Gone with the Wind & Rebecca producer David O. Selznick, with whom Hitchcock had a tempestuous 7 year working relationship & who he didn’t mind tweaking whenever possible.
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​As was typical of Hitchcock, before shooting began, he & screenwriter John Michael Hayes, who would write 4 Hitchcock features in 3 years, fleshed out how each scene would play & how it would be shot.  For Hitchcock, the joy in filmmaking was often spent in the pre-production period, where he would take the film he saw in his head & put it to paper in written & storyboard form.  To craft the story of Rear Window, Hitch determined he would need only 1 set, but that it would have to be the biggest ever constructed on a Hollywood soundstage up to that point.  Consisting of 31 total apartments, some with actual running water, the set would measure 100 feet wide by 185 feet long & 40 feet high.  Jeff’s apartment is actually on ground level of the soundstage & the courtyard below was hollowed out by smashing through the floor to the basement.  The set was so massive that each actor in the adjacent apartments wore an ear piece to receive direction from Hitchcock.  Finally, the set was lit for 4 specific times of day to save time & money, morning, daytime, twilight & nighttime.  Even with shortcuts for Hollywood magic, the set cost more than $80,000 to design & construct.
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​While Hitchcock famously referred to actors as mere cattle & has been labeled a misogynist by film critics for decades, I would have the viewer pay particular attention to his treatment of Grace Kelly’s Lisa throughout Rear Window.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not absolving Hitchcock, just offering something to think about.  First, yes, she is photographed as an object of desire, as both male & female actors of the era were, but in the context of a film about voyeurism that seems natural, even as Jeff would rather look at her than have physical contact.  Lisa is the action character, who is willing to risk her life for love.  She is strong, independent & a sexual being, not afraid of intimacy or commitment.  In fact, Lisa Freemont may be the strongest female character in Hitchcock’s filmography.  That may not erase the leering voyeurism of miss torso or the insatiable honeymooner, but that had better be left to our longer discussion.

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  • Home
  • Top 10 Lists
    • My Top 10 Favorite Movies
    • Top 10 Heist Movies
    • Top 10 Neo-Noir Films
    • The Top 10 Films of the Troubles (1969-1998) >
      • The Troubles Selected Timeline
    • Top 10 Films from 2001
    • Director Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Film Noir Directors
      • Top 10 Coen Brothers Films
      • Top 10 John Ford Films
      • Top 10 Samuel Fuller Films
      • Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films
      • Top 10 John Huston Films
      • Top 10 Fritz Lang Films (American)
      • Val Lewton Top 10
      • Top 10 Ernst Lubitsch Films
      • Top 10 Jean-Pierre Melville Films
      • Top 10 Nicholas Ray Films
      • Top 10 Preston Sturges Films
      • Top 10 Robert Siodmak Films
      • Top 10 William Wellman Films
      • Top 10 Billy Wilder Films
    • Actor/Actress Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Joan Blondell Movies
      • Top 10 Clark Gable Movies
      • Top 10 Ava Gardner Films
      • Top 10 Gloria Grahame Films
      • Top 10 Jean Harlow Movies
      • Top 10 Miriam Hopkins Films
      • Top 10 Grace Kelly Films
      • Top 10 Burt Lancaster Films
      • Top 10 Carole Lombard Movies
      • Top 10 Myrna Loy Films
      • Top 10 Marilyn Monroe Films
      • Top 10 Robert Mitchum Noir Movies
      • Top 10 Paul Newman Films
      • Top 10 Robert Ryan Movies
      • Top 10 Norma Shearer Movies
      • Top 10 Barbara Stanwyck Films
    • Top 10 Noir Films (Classic Era)
    • Top 10 Pre-Code Films
    • Top 10 Actresses of the 1930's
  • Reviews
    • Quick Hits: Short Takes on Recent Viewing >
      • Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache
      • Elevator to the Gallows ('58)
      • Days of Heaven
      • Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
      • Incindies (2010)
      • In the Mood For Love (2000)
      • Last Picture Show Teaser Intro
      • Le Silence De La Mer ('49)
      • The Princess Bride ('87) Intro
      • Pulp Fiction ('94) Intro
    • The 1910's >
      • The Lubitsch German Silents
    • The 1920's >
      • The Odessa Steps Sequence as Continuing Film History
      • Sunrise (1927)
      • Wild Orchids ('29)
    • The 1930's >
      • Becky Sharp (1935)
      • Blonde Crazy
      • Bombshell ('33)
      • The Cheat
      • The Conquerors
      • The Crowd Roars
      • The Divorcee
      • Frank Capra & Barbara Stanwyck: The Evolution of a Romance
      • Heroes for Sale
      • The Invisible Man (1933)
      • L'Atalante (1934)
      • Let Us Be Gay
      • My Man Godfrey
      • No Man of Her Own (1932)
      • Platinum Blonde ('31)
      • Reckless ('35)
      • The Sign of the Cross (1932)
      • The Sin of Nora Moran (1932)
      • True Confession ('37)
      • Virtue ('32)
      • The Women
    • The 1940's >
      • Casablanca (1942)
      • The Story of Citizen Kane
      • Criss Cross (1949)
      • Double indemnity
      • Jean Arthur in A Foreign Affair
      • The Killers 1946 & 1964 Comparison
      • The Maltese Falcon Intro
      • Moonrise (1948)
      • My Gal Sal (1942)
      • Nightmare Alley
      • Notorious Intro ('46)
      • Overlooked Christmas Movies of the 1940's
      • Pursued (1947)
      • Remember the Night ('40)
      • The Red Shoes (1948)
      • The Set-Up ('49)
      • They Won't Believe Me (1947)
      • The Third Man
    • The 1950's >
      • The Asphalt Jungle Secret Cinema Intro
      • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ('58) Intro
      • The Crimson Kimono (1959)
      • A Face in the Crowd (1957)
      • In a Lonely Place
      • A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
      • Mogambo ('53)
      • Niagara (1953)
      • The Night of The Hunter ('55)
      • Pushover Noir City
      • Rear Window (1954)
      • Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
      • Red Dust ('32 vs Mogambo ('53)
      • The Searchers ('56)
      • Singin' in the Rain Introduction
      • Some Like It Hot ('59) >
        • Some Like it Hot Intro (Beyond the Bay)
    • The 1960's >
      • The April Fools (1969)
      • Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
      • Cape Fear ('62)
      • Cool Hand Luke (1967) Intro
      • Dr Strangelove Intro
      • For a Few Dollars More (1965)
      • Fistful of Dollars (1964)
      • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1968)
      • The Hustler ('61) Intro
      • The Man With No Name Trilogy
      • The Misfits ('61)
      • The Umbrellas of Cherbourg/La La Land
    • The 1970's >
      • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
      • American Graffiti Introduction
      • Chinatown Introduction
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle ('73)
      • Jaws Intro
    • The 1980's >
      • Blood Simple ('84)
      • A Christmas Story Intro
      • Scarface (1983)
    • The 1990's >
      • The General (1998)
    • 2000's >
      • Belfast (2021)
      • Blonde (2022)
      • Hunger (2008)
      • In Bruges (2008)
      • Joy Division
      • Mank (2020)
      • No Man's Land (2001)
      • Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
      • Wall-E
      • Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
      • The Top 10 Films I watched in 2020
  • Artists
    • Actors/Actresses >
      • Joan Blondell
      • Faye Dunaway: 1967-1976
      • The Noir Villainy of Dan Duryea
      • Clark Gable Bio
      • Jean Harlow Bio
      • Veronica Lake
      • Norma Shearer
    • Directors/Producers/Cinematographers >
      • Founders Series: Alice Guy-Blache
      • John Alton
      • Joan Harrison-Producer/Writer
      • Hitchcock & Cary Grant
      • William Wellman
    • Books >
      • Book Reviews >
        • Book Review: Clark Gable by D. Bret
      • Pre-Code
      • Actor Bios
      • Film Noir
      • Director Bios
      • Studio Head Bios
      • Hollywood History
    • Studio
  • Resources
    • Sight & Sound Top 100 2022
    • NOTES >
      • American Graffiti Notes
      • Anatomy of a Murder Notes
      • The Asphalt Jungle Outline
      • Breakfast Club Notes
      • Citizen Kane Notes
      • It's A Wonderful Life Notes
      • Rebel Without a Cause Notes
      • Singin' in the Rain Notes
    • CMBA Interview/Profile
    • Bay Cinema Society Press
    • Hollywood History >
      • Production Code
      • Film Noir
  • Video Introductions
    • Video Introductions
  • Last Picture Show Notes
  • Paul Verhoeven