Rear Window
4 Oscar Nominations·AFI #48·BFI #40·National Film Registry
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A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
What critics thought
One of the most unanimously admired films in the Hitchcock canon, Rear Window earns its reputation through pure craft: a single confined set, a voyeuristic premise that implicates the audience as much as the protagonist, and a sustained grip that never loosens from first frame to last. Contemporary reviewers in 1954 were enthusiastic but occasionally noted the film's lack of deeper significance, while later critics — writing after decades of influence — tend to treat it as something close to a perfect object.
“Mr. Hitchcock's film is not 'significant.' What it has to say about people and human nature is superficial and glib, but it does expose many facets of the loneliness of city life, and it tacitly demonstrates the impulse of morbid curiosity. The purpose of it is sensation, and that it generally provides in the colorfulness of its detail and in the flood of menace toward the end.”
Bosley Crowther·The New York Times
“never an instant ... when Director Hitchcock is not in minute and masterly control of his material”
Time
“What helps to make the story highly entertaining is the fact that it is enhanced by clever dialogue and by delightful touches of comedy and romance that relieve the tension.”
Harrison's Reports
“Hitchcock traps us right from the first ... And because Hitchcock makes us accomplices in Stewart's voyeurism, we're along for the ride. When an enraged man comes bursting through the door to kill Stewart, we can't detach ourselves, because we looked too, and so we share the guilt and in a way we deserve what's coming to him.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“Hitchcock made a career out of indulging our voyeuristic tendencies, and he never excited them more skilfully, or with more gleeful self-awareness, than in Rear Window”
Killian Fox·The Guardian
Genres
Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Cast & Crew
DirectorAlfred Hitchcock
StarringJames Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr
ComposerFranz Waxman
Rear Window
4 Oscar Nominations·AFI #48·BFI #40·National Film Registry
A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
What critics thought
One of the most unanimously admired films in the Hitchcock canon, Rear Window earns its reputation through pure craft: a single confined set, a voyeuristic premise that implicates the audience as much as the protagonist, and a sustained grip that never loosens from first frame to last. Contemporary reviewers in 1954 were enthusiastic but occasionally noted the film's lack of deeper significance, while later critics — writing after decades of influence — tend to treat it as something close to a perfect object.
“Mr. Hitchcock's film is not 'significant.' What it has to say about people and human nature is superficial and glib, but it does expose many facets of the loneliness of city life, and it tacitly demonstrates the impulse of morbid curiosity. The purpose of it is sensation, and that it generally provides in the colorfulness of its detail and in the flood of menace toward the end.”
Bosley Crowther·The New York Times
“never an instant ... when Director Hitchcock is not in minute and masterly control of his material”
Time
“What helps to make the story highly entertaining is the fact that it is enhanced by clever dialogue and by delightful touches of comedy and romance that relieve the tension.”
Harrison's Reports
“Hitchcock traps us right from the first ... And because Hitchcock makes us accomplices in Stewart's voyeurism, we're along for the ride. When an enraged man comes bursting through the door to kill Stewart, we can't detach ourselves, because we looked too, and so we share the guilt and in a way we deserve what's coming to him.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“Hitchcock made a career out of indulging our voyeuristic tendencies, and he never excited them more skilfully, or with more gleeful self-awareness, than in Rear Window”
Killian Fox·The Guardian
Genres
Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Cast & Crew
DirectorAlfred Hitchcock
StarringJames Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr
ComposerFranz Waxman
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