Rear Window

Laid up with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his tiny, sweltering courtyard apartment. To pass the time between visits from his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his fashion model girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), the binocular-wielding Jeffries stares through the ...more

Who's the real voyeur in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window? Is it the film's peeping protagonist, James Stewart's wheelchair-bound photographer, L.B. Jeffries? Is it Hitchcock himself? Or is it the audience? In many ways, the classic "voyeur" film isn't even about voyeurism. It's about human interaction and the lack thereof. Even though Jeffries spends all day staring out his window at his neighbors, he knows more about them than they know about each other. In a twisted fashion, he's closer to them ...more

On the surface a comic thriller about a photographer and the crime he thinks took place across the courtyard, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) turns into an interrogation of voyeurism and movie-viewing. Keeping the camera in Jeff's apartment (except for a couple of shots near the climax), Hitchcock limits the audience's view to what Jeff can see and hear from his immobilized perch. He is free to take in the spectacle of the events in the apartments that he sees, but he is powerless to ...more