Movies on the Edge

By STEVE PERSALL

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 28, 2000

REAR WINDOW (PG) (112 min.) -- Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic returns in remastered splendor after years of non-circulation in theaters. This film is one of several previously "lost" Hitchcock works spruced up by film archivists now sneaking their way through the U.S. art-house circuit.

[Photo: Universal Studios] Jimmy Stewart is convalescing photographer Jeff Jeffries, who suspects his neighbor of murder, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Historians generally rate Rear Window alongside Vertigo and Psycho as the best examples of Hitchcock's droll movie menace. Certainly, it is one of the most enduring, with voyeurism still a compelling subject 46 years later and a timeless level of suspense.

James Stewart anchors the film as photographer Jeff Jeffries, cooped-up in his apartment with a broken leg. Boredom leads to curiosity about neighbors spied in a building across the alley.

Each anonymous stranger becomes known to him: a frustrated songwriter, frisky newlyweds, Miss Lonelyheart, Miss Torso the ballet dancer and especially a grim gentleman named Lars Thornwald (Raymond Burr) who may have murdered his wife.

Jeff becomes an amateur sleuth, keeping Thornwald under surveillance and, in one nail-biting sequence, sending his girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) into the suspect's apartment for clues. Is Jeff's imagination pushing him toward accusing an innocent man? Or could he be the only person who can solve a perfect crime?

Rear Window contains flashes of Hitchcock's macabre humor and a claustrophobic feel because almost every shot originates in Jeff's apartment. The audience begins to appreciate his peeks across the alley in the same way he does, a visual escape from four walls closing in. The set creating this urban world was one of the largest indoor locations of its time, and is still a marvel.

Each look through Rear Window brings another Hitchcockian trait into sharper focus; Stewart's ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances, the defrosting blond (Grace Kelly) and a wry spark of common sense, this time from that wonderful character actor Thelma Ritter.

Rear Window should look and sound better than it has in decades, thanks to the remastering process. The fresh version was not previewed for this review.

Opens today at Tampa Theatre and Beach Theater. A