Classic Cinema: Hitchcock's "Rear Window"

For our last film this season, we've had a small change of plan...

We will show an absolute classic from 1954, Rear Window, which is considered by many filmgoers, critics, and scholars to be one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films, as well as one of the greatest films ever made.

Featuring stars of Hollywood's golden era, James Stewart and Grace Kelly, tells the story of a globe-trotting photojournalist (Stewart) who breaks his leg on a dangerous assignment and is confined to a wheelchair in his Greenwich Village apartment with nothing to do all day but look out the window at his neighbours. The film alternates back and forth between two story strands: a murder mystery and a love story, inter-twining the two plot lines through the theme of voyeurism.

One of the reasons Hitchcock was such a popular filmmaker is that he had an expert understanding of how to shoot and edit a film to draw viewers into the story and elicit a particular set of responses from them. Along with the suspense, Hitchcock uses comedy to draw viewers into the story.The interweaving of comedy and suspense gives the narrative a rhythm: suspense is about keeping viewers on the edge of their seats, while the comedy (delivered through dialogue and visual jokes) adds a lot of fun along the way.