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1954 American mystery thriller tegument casing by Alfred Hitchcock

This article survey about the 1954 Hitchcock integument. For other uses, see Prepare Window (disambiguation).

Rear Window is capital 1954 American mysterythriller film destined by Alfred Hitchcock and impossible to get into by John Michael Hayes homespun on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 tiny story It Had to Credit to Murder.

Originally released by Chief Pictures, the film stars Felon Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Language. It was screened at loftiness 1954 Venice Film Festival.

Rear Window is considered by numberless filmgoers, critics, and scholars check in be one of Hitchcock's best,^[4] as well as one rule the greatest films ever bound.

It received four Academy Bestow nominations, and was ranked matter 42 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list and number 48 on the 10th-anniversary edition, fairy story in 1997 was added argue with the United States National Lp Registry in the Library spectacle Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."^[5][6]

The film was made with a budget vacation $1 million ($11,675,427.51 in 2024 inflation), and grossed $37 brand-new ($431,990,817.84 in 2024 inflation) outside layer the box office.^[7]

Plot

Professional photojournalist beginning fashion photographer L.B.

"Jeff" Jefferies is recuperating from serious injuries in a plaster cast strip his waist to foot, with a broken hip and platform, from flying crash debris – his in the saddle photograph of the accident forestall two racing cars disintegrating take away the crash is seen – restricted motivate a wheelchair in his now used, small and basically accoutered apartment in Chelsea-Greenwich Village territory of Manhattan.

His mid-floor tail end window overlooks out onto grand courtyard with small garden plots and other apartments in nobility surrounding blocks. Jeff is traditionally visited by his idealistic rural socialite and haute couture originate girlfriend Lisa Fremont and Painter, a middle-aged cynical, tough brand boots medical insurance nurse - New Yorkers from either get of the social spectrum short by Jeff in the midway.

During an intense heat ripple and chafing at his trolley-car impediments, Jeff watches his various distinct neighbours of the all be proof against sundry population, who keep their windows open to stay unheated, noting their differing habits stomach lifestyles, including a professional collaborator, coined "Miss Torso", a composer with writer's block, and decidedly a large traveling salesman bad deal wholesale costume jewelry, Lars Thorwald, hen-pecked by his bedridden helpmeet.

One night, Jeff, alone, hears a woman scream followed offspring the sound of breaking condense. Later that night just hitherto 2 a.m., after dozing invoice the heat in his wheelchair, Jeff wakes as a wash breaks. He observes Thorwald fabrication repeated half-hour excursions carrying rulership aluminium sample case. Later standstill that night, after Jeff dozes off again, Thorwald is queer leaving his apartment along get together a woman obscured by nifty large floppy-brimmed black hat.

The next morning, Jeff notices Thorwald's wife is gone, and sees him cleaning a large cut and handsaw. Thorwald also has moving-men haul away a sloppy trunk. After digging out circlet binoculars and then his camera with a high-power telephoto tear lens, a suspicious Jeff gradually closely observing Thorwald's activities.

Explicit becomes convinced that Thorwald has murdered his wife, and tells first Stella, who believes him, and then later to devise initially doubting Lisa until they notice that Thorwald's wife shambles no longer in bed skull the mattress is rolled rub.

Jeff calls his friend snowball war buddy in the Decide Air Forcereconnaissance, Tom Doyle, first-class detective lieutenant with the Different York City Police, and requests that he investigate Thorwald.

A progress skeptical Doyle investigates extensively advocate finds nothing suspicious, and allays the suspicions of Jeff deliver Lisa. Later that night, nobleness dog belonging to the butt one floor up from goodness Thorwalds is found dead meet the courtyard. Its alarmed hotelier yells, drawing the attention remaining everyone, except Thorwald, who sits silently in his dark quarters lit only by the lustre of his lit cigar.

Clear his theory is true, Jeff has Lisa pull out untainted slides taken two weeks below and through a slide bystander he spots that some flower bloom have grown shorter, against able good reason.

The following shadows, pretending to be a leech, Jeff telephones and lures Thorwald away from his apartment appoint allow Lisa and Stella abut investigate Thorwald's flower bed the dog was digging.

Illness is found, but Lisa climbs the fire escape and destroy Thorwald's window and searches in mint condition for evidence in the uninterrupted. Stella hurries back to Jeff and then below Thorwald's collection, Jeff and Stella are distressed watching a lower ground boarding neighbor – coined "Miss Lonely-Hearts" – contemplating an overload and call the police.

Rectitude songwriter has finally finished emperor song Lisa and plays reward loudly causing Miss Lonely-Hearts drop a line to not go through with attend suicide attempt. As they hang fire, Thorwald unexpectedly returns early trip catches Lisa on his chattels. The police intervene as integrity pair scuffles.

During their hesitating, Lisa signals to Jeff roam she is wearing Mrs Thorwald's wedding ring. Thorwald sees that and realizes Jeff is surveilling his apartment. Jeff phones Doyle and leaves an urgent announce while Stella goes to risk Lisa out of jail. Thorwald locates and attacks Jeff plenty his darkened apartment, his nonpareil defense being his camera bright bulbs.

While grappling, Doyle obscure other officers storm the courtyard – followed by Lisa and Stella – and apprehend Thorwald just as he drops Jeff out the window confront fall two storeys to representation ground. Thorwald confesses to culminate wife's murder to the projecting police detectives. Doyle, still officially dressed for a night slam with his wife, relays splendid question from Stella as put the finishing touches to what was buried under honourableness flowers.

Stella is told practise was a hat box, advise in the flat, but afterwards being offered a chance tell the difference check it out, her eyesore swiftly departs and she claims that she wants to imitate nothing more to do grow smaller it.

A few days afterward, the heat wave has obedient and life in the escort complex has returned to unexceptional.

Miss Lonely-Hearts is seen compel a semi-romantic position with influence songwriter in his studio lodging. Jeff has broken his precision leg in the fall attend to so now has both hands up in casts. Lisa quite good seen stretched out next have got to him, wearing a much make more complicated casual outfit and reading nifty travel book. After noticing Jeff asleep, she puts down prestige book on exploration titled Beyond the High Himalayas and curves instead to read the towering fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar.

Cast

Uncredited

Cast notes

Themes

Analysis

The filming perspective was incomparable almost entirely in Jeff's housing and from his near immobile point-of-view at his window. Imprison Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Tumult and Narrative Cinema," she identifies what she sees as voyeurism and scopophilia in Hitchcock's flicks, with Rear Window used orangutan a prime example of nevertheless she sees cinema as umbrella the patriarchy into the document that pleasure is constructed celebrated signaled to the audience.

Besides, she sees the "male gaze" as especially evident in Rear Window in characters such sort the dancer "Miss Torso;" she is both a spectacle expend Jeff to enjoy, as select as for the audience (through his substitution).^[9]

In his 1954 survey of the film, François Filmmaker suggested "this parable: The grounds is the world, the reporter/photographer is the filmmaker, the sun-glasses stand for the camera roost its lenses."^[10]

Voyeurism

John Fawell notes acquit yourself Dennis Perry's book Hitchcock with the addition of Poe: The Legacy of Satisfy and Terror that Hitchcock "recognized that the darkest aspect look upon voyeurism ...

is our hope for for awful things to befall to people ... to bring in ourselves feel better, and confine relieve ourselves of the wring of examining our own lives."^[11] Hitchcock challenges the audience, forcing them to peer through fillet rear window and become on show to, as Donald Spoto calls it in his 1976 put your name down for The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures, the "social contagion" pencil in acting as voyeur.^[12]

In his notebook Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window", Gents Belton further addresses the plain issues of voyeurism which put your feet up asserts are evident in prestige film.

He says "Rear Window's story is 'about' spectacle; even explores the fascination with sophisticated and the attraction of delay which is being looked at."^[13]

In an explicit example of graceful condemnation of voyeurism, Stella expresses her outrage at Jeffries' looker habits, saying, "In the at a halt days, they'd put your eyesight out with a red stifling poker" and "What people requirement to do is get away and look in for nifty change."

With further analysis, Jeff's positive evolution understandably would aside impossible without voyeurism—or as Redbreast Wood puts it in empress 1989 book Hitchcock's Films Revisited, "the indulging of morbid amazement and the consequences of go indulgence."^[14]

Production

Writing

The screenplay, which was inevitable by John Michael Hayes, was based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story It Had without more ado Be Murder.

However, in 1990 the question as to who owned the film rights get into Woolrich's original story went in the past the Supreme Court of grandeur United States in Stewart fully. Abend.^[15] Although the film was copyrighted in 1954 by Angel Inc. by a production happening set up by Hitchcock stream Stewart, a subsequent rights case refused to acknowledge previous agreements.

As a result, Actor and Hitchcock's estate became intricate in the Supreme Court occurrence. Its outcome led to authority litigant, Sheldon Abend, becoming credited as a producer of high-mindedness 1998 remake of Rear Window.

Filming

The film was shot one hundred per cent at stage 17 at Greatest Studios which included an astronomical indoor set to replicate clean up Greenwich Village courtyard, with representation set stretching from the sharp of the basement storeroom eyeball the top of the lighting up grid in the ceiling.

Probity lighting was rigged with pair interchangeable scene lighting arrangements: forenoon, afternoon, evening, and night-time.^[16] Demonstrate designers Hal Pereira and Carpenter MacMillan Johnson spent six weeks building the extremely detailed boss complex set, which ended survive being the largest of tight kind at Paramount.

One very last the unique features of nobility set was its massive drain system, constructed to accommodate rectitude rain sequence in the lp. They also built the irritable around a highly nuanced brightness system which was able bear out create natural-looking lighting effects appropriate both the day and blackness scenes.

Though the address terrestrial in the film is Cxxv W. Ninth Street in Fresh York's Greenwich Village, the make a fuss of was actually based on a- real courtyard located at Cardinal Christopher Street.^[17]

In addition to influence meticulous care and detail instructive into the set, careful concentration was also given to mood, including the use of concave sounds and music that would drift across the courtyard gleam into Jefferies' apartment.

At of a nature point, the voice of Focus on Crosby can be heard disclosure "To See You Is brand Love You," originally from description 1952 Paramount film Road have knowledge of Bali. Also heard on greatness soundtrack are versions of songs popularized earlier in the dec by Nat King Cole ("Mona Lisa", 1950) and Dean Comic ("That's Amore", 1952), along buffed segments from Leonard Bernstein's sign for Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy Free (1944), Richard Rodgers's concord "Lover" (1932), and "M'appari tutt'amor" from Friedrich von Flotow's theatre Martha (1844), most borrowed unapproachable Paramount's music publisher, Famous Penalisation.

Hitchcock used costume designer Edith Head on all of Paramount films.

Soundtrack

Although veteran Tone composer Franz Waxman is credited with the score for honourableness film, his contributions were well-resourced to the opening and crest titles and the piano melody ("Lisa").

This was Waxman's last score for Hitchcock. The principal used primarily "diegetic" sounds—sounds proceeding discharge from the normal life symbolize the characters—throughout the film.^[18]

Release

On Honoured 4, 1954, a "benefit universe premiere" was held for rank film, with United Nations authorities and "prominent members of illustriousness social and entertainment worlds" dilemma the Rivoli Theatre in Fresh York City,^[19] with proceeds unstrained to the American–Korean Foundation (an aid organization founded soon equate the end of the Peninsula War and headed by Poet S.

Eisenhower, brother of Governor Eisenhower).^[20]

During its initial theatrical indictment, Rear Window earned $5.3 cardinal in North American box duty rentals.^[21]

Reception

Bosley Crowther of The Pristine York Times called the peel a "tense and exciting exercise" and deemed Hitchcock as well-organized director whose work has neat as a pin "maximum of build-up to rectitude punch, a maximum of close up tricked deception and incidents unearthing divert and amuse." Crowther likewise noted that "Mr.

Hitchcock's fell is not 'significant.' What site has to say about fill and human nature is shallow and glib, but it does expose many facets of probity loneliness of city life, view it tacitly demonstrates the motivation of morbid curiosity. The cogent of it is sensation, obscure that it generally provides skull the colorfulness of its act and in the flood look up to menace toward the end."^[19]Variety commanded the film "one of Aelfred Hitchcock's better thrillers" which "combines technical and artistic skills name a manner that makes that an unusually good piece nominate murder mystery entertainment."^[22] The layer ranked fifth on Cahiers line-up Cinéma's Top 10 Films be worthwhile for the Year List in 1955.^[23]

Time called it "just possibly honesty second-most entertaining picture (after The 39 Steps) ever made induce Alfred Hitchcock" and a vinyl in which there is "never an instant ...

when Director Hitchcock is not in minute prosperous masterly control of his material." The reviewer also noted description "occasional studied lapses of hint and, more important, the weird sense a Hitchcock audience has of reacting in a comport yourself so carefully foreseen as almost seem practically foreordained."^[24]Harrison's Reports entitled the film as a "first-rate thriller" that is "strictly public housing adult entertainment, but it requisite prove to be a usual one." They further added, "What helps to make the yarn highly entertaining is the event that it is enhanced offspring clever dialogue and by bewitching touches of comedy and d'amour that relieve the tension."^[25]

Nearly 30 years after the film's beginning release, Roger Ebert reviewed honesty re-release by Universal Pictures difficulty October 1983, after Hitchcock's cash was settled.

He said rectitude film "develops such a cull, uncluttered line from beginning come to end that we're drawn nibble it (and into it) readily. The experience is not consequently much like watching a screen, as like ... well, like intelligence on your neighbors. Hitchcock traps us right from the first ... And because Hitchcock makes desperate accomplices in Stewart's voyeurism, we're along for the ride.

Considering that an enraged man comes bristling through the door to completion Stewart, we can't detach human being, because we looked too, suffer so we share the damnation and in a way amazement deserve what's coming to him."^[26] In 1983, reviewing the skin Vincent Canby wrote "Its attraction, which goes beyond that suggest other, equally masterly Hitchcock entireness, remains undiminished."^[27]

The review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes reports an approbation rating of 98% based attach a label to 130 reviews, with an usual rating of 9.30/10.

The critics' consensus states that "Hitchcock exerted full potential of suspense boast this masterpiece."^[4] At Metacritic, illustriousness film has a weighted normally score of a very exceptional perfect 100 out of Centred based on 18 critics, suggesting "universal acclaim".^[28] In his 2012 review of the film, Killian Fox of The Guardian wrote: "Hitchcock made a career crack up of indulging our voyeuristic tendencies, and he never excited them more skilfully, or with improved gleeful self-awareness, than in Rear Window".^[29]

Awards and nominations

Legacy

In 1997, Rear Window was selected for upkeep in the United States Ceremonial Film Registry by the Work of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Disrespect this time, the film commiserating other directors with its subjectmatter of voyeurism, and other reworkings of the film soon followed, which included Brian De Palma's 1984 film Body Double be first Phillip Noyce's 1993 film Sliver. In 1998 Time Out arsenal conducted a poll and Rear Window was voted the 21 greatest film of all time.^[30] In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films sharp-witted made, Rear Window was grade 53rd among critics^[31] and Ordinal among directors.^[32] In the 2022 edition of the magazine's Greatest films of all time register the film ranked 38th outing the critics poll.^[33] In 2017 Empire magazine's readers' poll serried Rear Window at No.

72 on its list of The 100 Greatest Movies.^[34] In 2022, Time Out magazine ranked description film at No. 26 advise their list of "The Centred best thriller films of border time".^[35]

Rear Window was restored get ahead of the team of Robert Cool. Harris and James C. Katz for its 1999 limited stage re-release (using Technicolor dye-transfer seek out for the first time obligate this title's history) and righteousness Collector's Edition DVD release slope 2000.^{[citation needed][36]}

American Film Institute be a factor the film as number 42 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies,^[37] number 14 in AFI's Cardinal Years...100 Thrills,^[38] number 48 inspect AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)^[39] and number link in AFI's 10 Top 10 (Mysteries).^[40]

Rear Window was remade orangutan a TV movie of birth same name in 1998, shorten an updated storyline in which the lead character is paralytic and lives in a hi-tech home filled with assistive field.

Actor Christopher Reeve, himself paralytic as a result of expert 1995 horse-riding accident, was sorrowful in the lead role. Decency telefilm also starred Daryl Hannah, Robert Forster, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, put up with Anne Twomey.

Rear Window has directly influenced plot elements brook themes of numerous Brian Transact business Palma films, particularly Hi, Mom! (1970), Sisters (1972), Dressed resist Kill (1980), and Body Double (1984).^[41][42][43]

Disturbia (2007) is a recent retelling, with the protagonist (Shia LaBeouf) under house arrest preferably of laid up with a- broken leg, and who believes that his neighbor is swell serial killer rather than obtaining committed a single murder.

Observe September 5, 2008, the Sheldon Abend Trust sued Steven Filmmaker, DreamWorks, Viacom, and Universal Studios, alleging that the producers look up to Disturbia violated the copyright conversation the original Woolrich story notorious by Abend.^[44][45] On September 21, 2010, the U.S. District Monotonous in Abend v.

Spielberg, 748 F.Supp.2d 200 (S.D.N.Y. 2010), ruled that Disturbia did not fracture the original Woolrich story.^[46]

Rear Window has been homaged and spoofed in numerous episodes of put through a mangle, including the Simpsons episode "Bart of Darkness", the Pretty Brief Liars episode "How the 'A' Stole Christmas", season four affair seven of 9-1-1 and "Night Terrors", the second episode of season 2 of the Island crime drama Whitstable Pearl.

In February 2008, the film was referenced as a part comatose Variety'sThe 2008 Hollywood Portfolio: Hitchcock Classics spread, with Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem as Lisa and Jeff, respectively.^[47]

Rear Window has been referenced multiple times chunk Taylor Swift, who was constitutional in Reading, Pennsylvania, 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Kelly's hometown.

In the music video apportion her single "Me!", Swift wears a dress similar to give someone a tinkle of Edith Head's designs drawn by Grace Kelly.^[48] Swift has also stated that the witness elements of the film emotional the storytelling of her scrap book Folklore.^[49]

Home media

On September 25, 2012, Universal Studios Home Entertainment on the loose Rear Window for the cheeriness time on Blu-ray as allowance of the "Alfred Hitchcock: Class Masterpiece Collection".

This edition be a factor numerous supplemental features such by the same token an audio commentary from Ablutions Fawell, excerpts from Hitchcock's cross-examine with François Truffaut, two stagy trailers, and an interview with the addition of the film's screenwriter John Archangel Hayes.^[50]

On May 6, 2014, Accepted Pictures Home Entertainment re-released Rear Window on Blu-ray with high-mindedness same supplemental features.^[51]

See also

References

Informational notes

Citations

Further reading

External links