The temperature is 94 degrees. The city is sweltering. Everybody’s getting on everybody’s nerves.
That is the situation at the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 masterpiece “Rear Window,” a great movie to watch or rewatch during a heatwave. Jimmy Stewart plays L.B.
“Jeff” Jefferies, a photojournalist stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg in his Greenwich Village apartment. He’s bored and sweaty and itchy, with nothing to do but spy on all his neighbors with binoculars. Grace Kelly plays his girlfriend, Lisa Fremont, cool and unflappable about everything except her fervent desire that he settle down and marry her.
Their bantering and kissing and bickering is interrupted by his growing certainty that the events he’s been glimpsing through the windows of a neighbor across the courtyard add up to murder. Advertisement The movie’s action and suspense are propelled by this plot. Has the murder really taken place? Will Jeff and Lisa ever be able to prove it? Will the murderer become aware that they are watching and attempt to retaliate? But there’s something even darker and more interesting going on.
As you watch Jeff watching his neighbors you start to notice that everything he sees through their windows speaks in some way to his own conflict about whether or not to marry Lisa. There’s a young newlywed husband carrying his bride over the threshold of their new apartment where they passionately kiss before lowering the shades, which stay lowered for seve.