To get the overall score that you see, we add up all the review scores we’ve received and divide that total by the number of review scores we’ve received. There's a little bit of everything in it,-it's a work of art.Each review score is between 1-10. This is at times a profound film, but it also aims to entertain, it has a light touch, and it can be scary, it's romantic about couples and cynical about people. All sorts of learned books and articles have been written about this picture, some of them quite silly all at least partly right. Hitchcock is playing a sort game of cinematic chess, moving people and things around here and there, changing camera angles slyly, never showing his hand. There's less use of atmosphere here, as a new, more independent director was emerging, decidedly post-Selznick, often using color. This is, after Dial M For Murder, Hitchcock's first truly 'fifties' film, which is to say it is a far cry from the genteel romances and spy stuff he'd been doing before. The courtyard set is magnificently designed and photographed it looks both artificial and realistic, and seems almost to change at times, as circumstances dictate. Hitchcock had been making movies for three decades by the time he undertook this one, and he knew exactly what he was doing everything happens as it should, on time, with no fuss or bother. The actors all give superb, unflashy performances. It's a thriller, a romance, a mystery, and at times a comedy of manners. His nurse Stella agrees that something is wrong across the courtyard, and the threesome become amateur detectives. He convinces Kelly that something is amiss, but has trouble with his detective friend. Soon Stewart is, understandably, suspicious. Thorwald disappears and her husband starts going out at night carrying paper parcels that look like they came from a butcher shop. Stewart is at first only slightly interested in them until Mrs. Then there are the Thorwalds, a squabbling couple across the way. The newlyweds are continually having sex Miss Torso is a beautiful young woman who entertains many suitors there is a childless, somewhat pathetic-seeming middle-aged couple who dote over a pet dog Miss Lonelyhearts is a depressed, aging spinster with no apparent friends and the young, bachelor song-writer, when he isn't trying to compose songs, is either throwing parties or fits. These people and their predicaments represent different sides of his (and to a lesser extent Miss Kelly's) personality, offering glimpses of potential past, present and future selves and it is not always a flattering picture. The courtyard is a kind of mirror of his soul. Without realizing it he is really looking at different aspects of either himself or his relationship with Kelly. He develops attitudes toward each of them, ranging from mild amusement to empathy to sexual interest, depending on who he's looking at. In time he becomes a voyeur (which he probably already is, to a degree) and begins to observe his neighbors' private lives, as he views them through his lens in the courtyard. He spends most of his time idling about and playing with his camera.
His socialite girl-friend (Grace Kelly) is eager to marry him but Stewart has his doubts, since he lives a wandering life and is from a different social class. The plot is deceptively simple: a photographer (James Stewart) is stuck indoors with his leg in a cast during a hot New York summer. As such, it is a very cerebral and satisfying piece of work.
Considered in this light it is a cold masterpiece, playing more with the audience's thoughts and fears than with its softer, more personal emotions.
It is in this sense like his silent The Lodger, the static, confined Lifeboat, and the cut-less, one set Rope. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, wittily written by John Michael Hayes, is one of his many films I think of as much of a technical exercise as anything else.
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