There’s really nothing wrong with it the performances are good, the story holds you, and it is shot in the traditional yet interesting Hitchcockian manner–but there still seems to be something lacking. Part of me wants to label Strangers on a Train another in a line of “easy” Hitchcock thrillers, but part of me wants to put it higher than that. “My theory is that everyone is a potential murderer.” The mystery is engaging, and the climax is classic Hitchcock suspense it’s a ride. Through incredible use of camera tricks and set design, the film walks the line between claustrophobia (when it wants) and complete freedom of the (small, yet full) world around them. The whole film essentially takes place in the living room of Stewart’s apartment, looking through the window at the apartments surrounding his courtyard. He watches the tenant closely, hoping to catch the clue that will put him away. He takes to watching his neighbors, and ultimately stumbles upon a possible murder mystery in the apartment across the way. Jimmy Stewart plays a photographer in his final week of wheelchair confinement after an accident. It exceeded all of my expectations (which were optimistically high films don’t always hold up, critically acclaimed or not) and certainly ranks among the top of Hitchcock’s canon. Rear Window is one of the movies that got this whole thing started–this nagging voice in my head reminding me that I’d never seen it, and didn’t really know that much about it. Over the course of the film, we see people known only by nicknames assigned by the protagonist they don’t know we’re watching them, and they don’t know something sinister is going on in the rear apartment of their building. He’s packing up his apartment, going through his things, and looking out the window at passersby (whom he lovingly refers to as the unknowing “cast of characters” in the “play” that is his life). This sentiment, the concept of an unknown cast of characters familiar to one person, is what makes Rear Window so damn good. White has an essay called “Goodbye to Forty-Eighth Street” that I read every year or so. “A murderer would never parade his crime in front of an open window.”Į.B.
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