For a long time, Alfred Hitchcock was deemed ‘The Master of Suspense ‘. But of course, he was also big on voyeurism, and how it is we get drawn in to unhealthy obsessions such as murder plots and dark behaviour. So it is with his psychological thriller, Rear Window, written by John Michael Hayes and adapted from the short story It Had To Be Murder.
James Stewart portrays LB ‘Jeff’ Jeffries, a snarky photojournalist recuperating after a work-related injury. Unable to move because of a leg cast, he’s trapped in his Greenwich Village apartment. He whiles away his days watching the comings and goings of his many neighbours, all of which are prosaic enough, until he believes he’s witness to a murder. Raymond Burr as the shady neighbour and suspected killer Lars Thorwald is suitably insinuating and menacing, but it’s the relationship between Jeff and girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) that’s equally fascinating. A luminous model and socialite, she could have simply wafted around prettily in haute couture (and does, initially) but she’s a woman with agency, and becomes integral to the drama as she becomes as fixated with Lars and his strange behaviour as her beau. Indeed, she’s almost aroused by the way Jeff obsesses over the would-be accoutrements of murder: saws, rope and empty suitcases, and wants in.
Thelma Ritter, too,is an interesting co-star as Jeff’s nurse Stella. She’s another classic Hitchcock woman, one of his typically salty and cynical ladies who also gets involved in the voyeurism- as does, by extension, the audience. Hitchcock seems to be implicating everyone in this film, suggesting we would all be co-conspirators, given half the chance, to the dark side.
He was clearly onto something prophetic here in this tense and witty film. We are fascinated, in the twenty first century, by ghoulish podcasts, true crime dramas and doom- scrolling. And Hitch, I suspect, would have felt thoroughly vindicated and bloody loved it, the old oddball. Imagine his social media feeds. Actually, maybe don’t.
Hit The North 