I love the way that Alfred Hitchcock brings the audience along as he experiments. That's all Rear Window really is: an experiment. It's like he's that braggy friend who keeps claiming he can complete increasingly difficult tasks ("I'm going to make a movie on a single set, that's a recreation of an entire New York City block. The lead character is going to be stuck in a wheel chair the whole time. He never leaves the same room and neither does the camera. And it's going to be a thriller, and a romance."). I was impressed on a lot of levels. That set is a feat. The more I read about it, the more impressive it is. It was the largest single set ever built at the time and apparently, all the apartments were assembled so thoroughly that they even had plumbing. The balance of stories too. I loved that. Ms. Lonely Heart. The newlyweds. The ballet dancer. The composer. Of course, the murdering husband. I'll forgive that no one's neighbor's are really that interesting or easily follow-able, because those are still a lot of limitations that Hitchcock put on himself. Jimmy Stewart does an excellent job of keeping the story of a man watching other people engaging. The script very patiently builds and escalates the story.
Honestly, my only issue was that I got tired of listening to Stewart insist how hard his life as a photographer was. It's as if even the writer realized didn't believe that Stewart wouldn't drop everything to make sure he kept Grace Kelly around. Although, maybe I wasn't supposed to focus too hard on that 20 year age gap.
Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend
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