SHUT-IN MOVIES #15 - REAR WINDOW (1954)

Now, that's a classic! After the tedium and creepiness of Vertigo I decided to watch Rear Window, another 'classic' I'd never seen. And I gotta say I really enjoyed it! Great fun. However, I do have reservations. This is definitely a failing of mine but i couldn't wait for the ending, i was frutstrated and anxious to know what was going to happen, I believe that when I come to watch this for a second time I'll be able to just enjoy it without wanting it to end so quickly because there's so much to love in this film. The film is 100% set bound, but it's that set that helps to make the film so wonderful. It overlooks the shared garden of a four different building tenements and we get to meet a huge cast of characters who all live in the various different homes. There's the sexy dancer, the frustrated composer, the lonely spinster, the newly weds, the married couple and their dog and the sculpturist. Indeed its amazing how we come to know them so well since we only ever see them in longshot. Hitchcock creates a whole world of different characters all with their own lives and problems. The plot see James Stewart play a photographer who's been stuck indoors for that past 11 weeks with a broken leg who spends his time perving on his neighbours through his rear window. He becomes fixated on one neighbour, Raymond Burr, who Stewart thinks has murdered his own invalided wife. What follows is either a Stewart's descent into paranoic obsession caused by being shut indoors for so long a period, or the witnessing of the aftermath of a domestic murder. The film follows Stewart as he drags, first his nurse Thelma Ritter, and then his girlfriend, the staggering beautiful Grace Kelly in on his obsession, all the while his best friend a homicide detective tries to make him see reason. The film set entirely in Stewart's one room appartment helps to build the sense of claustaphobia, and Stewart's vunerability helps to build the building sense of dread. This film is the very definition of a slow burn movie, which i didn't like on this viewing but will like do on the next. Those final minutes of the film are simply exhilarating! I was utterly gripped, that slow burn makes it that payoff makes the whole film so so worth it! Bloody loved it!

9/10