Rear Window (1954)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

As a Hitchcock fan, I am guilty of serial-watching his oeuvres. An engaging tale about spying on your neighbours, which perhaps many of us are guilty of, James Stewart and Grace Kelly are timeless on screen. Is it paranoia or is it real ? If you're hindered and your leg is on a cast, will you take note of every single thing happening around you which may be only baseless, unfounded fear? Is there a killer on the loose? What are you going to do about it? These are the myriads of questions you ask when you watch this film. I am one of those skeptics when a Classic such as this gets adapted and recycled ( e.g. Disturbia with Shia Leboeuf )since there was only one Hitchcock, one James Stewart and one Grace Kelly. Go be creative and leave this Classic film alone.

This is actually one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. I almost liked it as good as Psycho or North by Northwest.

I must say, no signs of aging. Embedded in its day and yet totally relevant. Perhaps the most entertaining of all of Hitchcock's films. Marriage is the theme and murder is the hook. James Stewart is as perfect as he's ever been. He uses the contradictions of his character to create someone immediately familiar. Thelma Ritter's practicality includes a rant about the destructive effect of intelligence. Grace Kelly enters the scene like a character in a dream. She remains a sort of dream that's why to see her climb the killer's balcony is one of my most cherished film memories. If you haven't seen the film you may think I'm rambling but if you have, you know exactly what I mean, don't you?

Rear window is such a unique and interesting movie. It is one that almost stands alone in its plot and camera angles and things of that sort. During the first twenty to thirty minutes of this movie it was almost extremely boring and I kept constantly asking myself the same question over and over again, which is "are they really going to keep the camera in this one room for the whole movie?" I kept on telling myself that the camera would probably move sometime soon and they would change scenery sometime soon, but that time just never came. Throughout the film it took sometime for me to actually accept the new movie style that Hitchcock portrays in this film. During this film I went through almost 3 different stages of interest. The first stage consisted mostly of confusion and trying to figure out what was going on as they were introducing the different characters and scenarios. It was a very new movie feel for me so it took time to get used to. The second phase for me was unfortunately boredom, as I couldn't really engage into what was being played out in the different apartments. It wasn't until the end of the movie, about the time when the dog is found dead with its neck snapped that I really started to enjoy and became engaged in the film. The ending was very engaging and was extremely well done. It created an excellent sense of tension and suspense that I think engages every single viewer. During the whole process of watching the movie I can't really say I enjoyed it at all but once I looked back on it and realized the different cinematic elements and styles I came to appreciate it and understand it more. I definitely have a strong bias here because I was born into a generation of such great quality cameras and such good editing and animation. For this reason it can be really hard for me to engage in older movies of this style. Nonetheless this movie was very interesting to look back on and see how Hitchcock portrayed the characters in such an interesting way. It was so different and cool to basically see people as non-actors but just as every day people. You really get a sense of this when the movie is portraying someone in their everyday life without them supposedly knowing that they are being watched. You see the pureness of every shot. This film really enacts a different feeling in the viewer, as it is something were really not used to seeing. Overall I cant really say that I enjoyed this movie to much as I found it slightly boring and un-engaging. There are many great cinematic elements that make it very different and interesting. The whole stationary camera sense was just two different for me and I was able to really appreciate and enjoy the movie very much.