L. B. “Jeff” Jefferies is a globetrotting professional photographer who breaks his leg after getting too close to the action at a Formula One race. Jefferies is confined to a wheelchair with a full leg cast that reads “Here lie the bones of L. B. Jefferies,” and the wreckage of his camera decorates his desktop like a modernist sculpture. Jefferies convalesces in his Greenwich Village apartment looking out on a courtyard, and the windows and doors and fire escapes and gardens of his neighbors. It’s summertime, and New York is caught in the middle of a sweltering heat wave. Alfred Hitchcock and cinematographer Robert Burks are able to convey the entire set-up of their masterpiece movie in the one long shot that opens Rear Window (1954). This picture is arguably the crowning achievement in Hitchcock’s storied filmography, and seeing this film in the era of social distancing only enhances its themes of voyeurism and paranoia.
Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) is a bachelor on the mend and he’s dependent on his busybody nurse, Stella (Tony Award winner, Thelma Ritter) and his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly). Stella scolds Jeff for his new habit of spying on his neighbors assisted by his intrusive camera lenses. She also urges him to marry Lisa. Lisa’s a model who wants Jeff to give up his adventurous ways, settle down with her, and ply his trade in the world of New York fashion. Jeff is hesitant, seeing Lisa as too refined and fragile for his rough-edged, thrill-seeking life, and some of the strongest stuff of this film is the sparkling chemistry between the odd couple as they learn to work together as a team. Rear Window is a crime thriller and a rare gem of masterful cinematic suspense, but its also a very sexy and very funny film that easily eclipses the dumb fumblings of most rom-coms.
Stuck at home, Jeff can only interact with the world by watching it from his titular courtyard window, and he becomes increasingly caught-up in the lives of his neighbors whom he gives nicknames while weaving harmless fictions about their lives. One dark, rainy night, Jeff sees one of his neighbors behaving strangely and becomes convinced that the man has killed his wife. This is the event that sets the suspense in this taut thriller winding ever tighter, and it’s also the anchor of the film’s richest themes. Rear Window is a movie about watching – specifically about watching people who are unaware they are being observed and cast in the made-up stories of the viewer – the voyeur. But Rear Window is also a movie about the cinematic experience itself – Jeff’s big horizontal window looks like a movie screen and his use of cameras only underlines Hitchcock’s analogizing of voyeurism, movie-making, and movie-going. Jeff’s window essentially acts as a proscenium arch that opens onto the drama – comic and tragic – of the courtyard. The film’s opening and closing credits are accompanied by Jeff’s wooden blinds opening and closing in front of the window. In one scene a frustrated Lisa shuts all the blinds quickly declaring “Show’s over for tonight.”
All of this watching the world through a window feels more intensely personal than ever during this period of social distancing when we simultaneously long to be closer to our friends and neighbors while also fearing for our mutual safety in these plagued times. You don’t really need an excuse to watch an incredible Hitchcock movie, but watching Rear Window at the tail end of a global pandemic is something you may never – fingers crossed – have the chance to do again.