After fracturing his leg while photographing an auto race, L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) sits confined to a wheelchair in his Greenwich Village apartment and takes to surveilling the assorted personalities inhabiting the facing complex. When the odd behavior of one of these neighbors (Raymond Burr) leads Jefferies to believe he may have murdered and disposed of his wife, he draws in his gorgeous high society girlfriend (Grace Kelly) and acerbic home care nurse (Thelma Ritter) into his ever increasing suspicions. With a movie as beloved and discussed as "Rear Window", I'm not really sure that anything can really be added to the conversation. Hitchcock's film, masterfully constructed from a Cornell Woolrich short story, slowly, then surely as any ever concocted, takes you into its grasp. Though The Master's diabolical directorial hand deserves all the credit for the success of this taut, exciting, and unsurpassed classic, I realized while watching it for the umpteenth time how crucial the performances are. In his postwar films such as "Harvey" and Hitch's "Rope", Stewart was already showing a penchant for playing darker personages, and his voyeuristic performance here is riveting. So much hinges on the women as well: Ritter first delivers some really well-written, snappy dialogue than adds credibility to the story when her intelligent character comes around to Stewart's way of thinking. And Grace Kelly, at her most radiant, is the impetus for one of the most suspenseful sequences in cinema when she volunteers to investigate the ongoings across the courtyard.
