At a Glance

A man confined to his apartment with a broken leg passes the time by spying on his neighbours. He suspects one of his neighbours of murder and must try to convince non-believers.

Detailed Information

Rear Window
By Ross Forbes, Blockbuster.co.uk

This 1954 Alfred Hitchcock classic features Jimmy Stewart as ‘everyman’ newspaper photographer L.B. Jeffries; who has been injured while covering a race track event and is now confined with a broken leg to a two room apartment with nothing to entertain him but the windows of his neighbours. (ooh er... –Ed.)

What starts out as casual glances into the windows of the apartments around the adjoining courtyard soon turns into a soap opera of ordinary people’s lives and then to murder. L.B Jeffries (Jimmy Stuart) starts to watch the lives of his neighbours unfold, but takes particular interest in the life of the man across from him who’s wife seems to have vanished. Jeffries life soon becomes an almost round the clock vigil of his neighbours apartment as he begins to suspect that the man has murdered his wife.

L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stuart) relationship with long-term girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) is on the rocks as he feels that she will not be suited to his adventurous lifestyle, but his opinions about her change as the mystery of the man across the courtyard deepens, and she too begins to get dragged into the murder mystery. Are their suspicions correct or is the confined space of the apartment making them read too much into the evidence?

Hitchcock shoots ‘Rear Window’ almost solely from Jeffries apartment, and we see what he sees, making us complicit in his voyeurism of his neighbour lives, whilst building up the lives of the characters living in the other apartment and using them to echo the relationship of Jeffries and Freemont and also how ordinary their lives and our lives are, and how murder could be possible right next door.