Looking Back at “Rear Window”

When I was much younger, I always had trouble with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 thriller, Rear Window.  Set in New York’s Greenwich Village, it’s the story of Jeff, a globe-trotting photojournalist (James Stewart), who has broken his leg in the line of duty. Stuck in his tiny upstairs flat, with much too much time on his hands, Jeff has nothing to do but spy on his neighbors, through binoculars, in the apartment building across the way. Critics discuss this film as an exploration of voyeurism, with audience members essentially joining Stewart as Peeping Toms. Some recent feminist scholars have gone further, seeing Rear Window in terms of the notorious “male gaze,” the way movies are designed to reinforce men’s stereotypes about the women they can’t stop watching.  

 My problem with the film was this: I too had endured a broken tibia. In fact, I’d endured two, from ski accidents a year and a half apart. (Yes, I quit skiing thereafter.) So I was sensitive indeed to any inaccuracies about life in a plaster cast. I could well understand Jeff’s restlessness, and appreciated the detail of him desperately trying relieve the itchy skin inside the cast by cautiously inserting a long-handled backscratcher. But! Why was he stuck in a wheelchair throughout the film? Why wasn’t there a pair of crutches around?  Yes, a few weeks in a thigh-to-toe plaster cast can indeed seem like an eternity, but why was Jeff so helpless, and so miserable, when his cast was apparently due to come off a mere seven weeks after the accident, thus implying that the break wasn’t all that drastic? (Try wearing a cast for six months sometime!)  

 Fortunately, my legs are both whole these days (knock wood!), which frees me to appreciate Hitchcock’s work on this clever and  original film. I was not surprised to learn that it was made entirely on the Paramount Studios back lot, with Jeff’s fixed point  of view focused almost entirely on a multi-story apartment building that spreads before him like a stage set. It’s a  midsummer heatwave, which means (in an era before the widespread advent of air conditioning) that life plays out through wide-open windows and on fire escapes. He’s spent so much time observing the building’s inhabitants that he’s given some of them nicknames, like Miss Torso (a curvaceous dancer who seems to have few clothes and a lot of company) and Miss Lonelyhearts (who only pretends to have visitors, and appears on the brink of being  suicidal).

 One neighbor (played by the hulking Raymond Burr) apparently likes growing plants in the building’s small flowerbed, but has no use for his neighbor’s little dog. He also doesn’t seem, from Jeff’s wheelchair-bound perspective, to have the best relationship with his invalid wife. He’s a traveling salesman, so perhaps it’s not odd that he comes and goes at odd hours, carrying a suitcase. But Jeff is quick to cast him as the bad guy in a murder mystery. Is he?

 Jeff’s accomplices in trying to solve this mystery that may or may not exist include a peppery visiting nurse (the always delightful Thelma Ritter) and a gorgeous socialite (Grace Kelly) who’s deeply in love with him. Kelly’s Lisa Fremont makes old-time viewers like me recall what was so great about 1950s fashion.  Lisa claims she’s ready to give up her lavish lifestyle to join Jeff in holy matrimony; he’s skeptical, and perhaps he has reason to be. In the course of this film she shows her underlying pluck, but are they ready for happily ever after? That’s one mystery that Rear Window never solves.