Review of Rear Window (1954) by Muhammed N — 01 Aug 2012

Rear Window- "A thriller one of its kind ".

How would you feel if you were being watched right now ? Your most intimate actions being monitored and your each movement noted. Rear window is a precise study of the disease of voyeurism. As the movie begins we feel it so funny and comical, with the wheel chair ridden Jeff making so many funny statements about his queer neighbors in the neighborhood. He keeps observing all of their personal and valuable actions and quite sadistically mocks them. But as the hours role by his obsession to peep into others lives takes on a different route. And his own actions start giving him delusions of grandeur that there's something wrong in a house. This is where the movie takes a violently sharp turn which nearly makes the viewers grasp towards their seats. Hitchcock quite masterfully turns what should have been a pleasant experience into something nauseating and excruciating within the knack of a second. James Stewart plays the paranoid, self made photo journalist Jeffreys who finds pleasure peeping into others affairs. This performance is one of the best of his whole career. The support cast gives an ovation worthy performance who plays the strange neighbors. What Hitchcock does is brilliant, he plays with the viewers minds and drives them mad. He hypnotizes them with his close up shots and use of suspenseful music. Although the movie weaves around Jeff and this obnoxious neighbors, Hitchcock addresses to the modern society through a thriller. The lack of privacy and extreme voyeurism in the modern ages has been shown in a unique way that rethinking about it can make us puke at this modern age. Hitchcock employs unique and very different cinematography in Rear Window. The shots through the binoculars and the long lensed camera are just brilliant and so amazing. The editing of the movie is so perfect and Hitchcock makes it so sure that each frame is perfect and appropriately fit into the celluloid. Rear window was one of the first movies to employ the art of suspense first. It's a movie about modern times told in the form a thriller and surely this is one of Hitchcock's great movies.

My Rating : A+.