Look Out For 'Rear Window'

1954...Dior's A-line dress has swept Europe and the United States, charm bracelets are in and the precursor to the pill box hat Jackie Kennedy Onuses made so famous is smaller here and squatter. Manners reign supreme and the neuroses Arthur Miller wrote about are running rampant, but have not been made into pop psychology yet. It is the years when the stream-lined apple-green kitchens appealed to the June Cleaver housewife, fully equipped with automatic dishwasher, garbage disposal and cabinets full of rum. Something eerie lurks behind the placidity of the 1950s setting and L.B. Jeffries is out to find it, binoculars in hand and his snooping mind alert. It is the year the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, made his voyeuristic thriller, "Rear Window."

Hitchcock's film, written by John Michael Hayes and adapted from the short story by Cornell Woolrich, intertwines a murder mystery and the voyeuristic antic of an incapacitated photographer, with a feud of the sexes. Lisa Carol Freemont, the most eligible Park avenue princess, is in love with said photographer and is trying to convince him to take the next step in any wholesome '50's relationship, marriage. Grace Kelly and James Stewart are inimitable in the respective roles. Kelly, with the finesse, polish and beauty which is her trademark, jousts incredibly well with the curmudgeonly, witty Stewart, whose character L.B. Jeffries will not submit to the web of charm in which Kelly's Freemont tries to entangle him.

This is the movie where I, and I believe everyone I know, fell in love with Grace Kelly. Hitchcock knows the lines of her face uncannily well and he shoots her with the best lighting and in the most flattering of poses. Not that she has any bad angles...

Kelly's entrance into the movie remains one of the most memorable scenes in film history. She enters Jeffries' apartment, coming down a small flight of entrance stairs. We see her in her full glory, a chiffon A-line flouncy dress appliqued with fronds which emerge gracefully from the waste band. She slowly and gracefully takes off her wrap and walks towards the camera, leaning in toward Stewart. Suddenly the angle turns and shows Kelly bending toward Stewart who is seated in his wheelchair. In slow motion, their lips touch. The camera returns to regular speed as she lifts her lips from his and whispers to him, her lips-sticked lips resisting with amazing elasticity the magnetic force which connects the two of them. You can almost hear the snap when her lips let go, despite the silence on the screen. She whispers, "How's your leg?"

He responds, "Hurts a little."

"And your stomach?"

"Empty as a football."

"And your love life?"

"Not too active."

"Anything else bothering you?"

"Mmhem...who are you?"

Along with this duo, Hitchcock has assembled notables such as the famous character actress Thelma Ritter as Stella, the savvy insurance nurse who tries to set Jeffries' mind straight about Lisa, and Raymond Burr as the sinister murder suspect, Mr. Lars Thorwald. Stella quips after she removes the thermometer from Jeffries' mouth, "You've got a hormone deficiency...Those bathing beauties you've been watching ["Miss Torso," the ballet dancer across the courtyard who flits around in her brassiere and panties] haven't raised your temperature in a month," When Jeffries continues to debate with her about marrying Lisa, Stella responds, "Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence."

These are the lines that make this movie great. These are the lines that movie buff can hear over and over again without tiring of them. These are the lines which make a movie a classic.

And these lines reveal the feud of sorts which emerges concerning the goings-on outside the rear window of Jeffries' Chelsea, New York apartment. Lisa Carol Freemont's theories of the murder are founded on the ideas of female ritual and manner. She claims that the missing Mrs. Thorwald would not have left without her favorite handbag which hangs on her bedpost. Nor would she have left all her jewelry at home, much less in the handbag where it would have gotten tangled-up and scratched. And she absolutely would not have left her wedding ring. So she was murdered. L.B. Jeffries, "Jeff" for short, wants to know what Mr. Thorwald was doing making three trips to and from his apartment at three in the morning with his salesman's case. It was raining. Where was he going? And what about the truck he sent away? And was it really Mrs. Thorwald who allegedly left with Lars Thorwald at six o'clock that same morning, just after Jeff had fallen asleep? The superintendent of the building must have been bribed. Mrs. Thorwald must have been murdered. Stella wants to know who killed the neighbor's dog which was always digging in Mr. Thorwald's flowerbed. She agrees with Lisa's female logic and says that someone would have to chop off her finger in order to remove her wedding ring. Mrs. Anna Thorwald was definitely murdered.

Lisa Carol Freemont struts her stuff and her street smarts by investigating the murder while Jeff and Stella watch from across the way. She is trying to convince her love Jeff that she can endure the danger and hardship he tackles on his photography assignments. She doesn't have to be holed up in some fashion salon or at the editor's desk of a fashion magazine. She's an independent gal who will prove to Jeff that even though she is from Park Avenue and knows the ritziest people in town (and could get him fashion shoots or portrait opportunities by the dozen in the City), she can weather anything he can.

These conflicting methodologies epitomize the battle of the sexes, 1950s style. As usual, Hitchcock centers this subplot around a mysterious, gruesome murder. Just be sure to catch Hitchcock's cameo as the composer/neighbor's butler. The big screen does not do this film justice with its unusual shadows and angles. And besides, who wouldn't want to see Grace Kelly ten feet high, with her arching eyebrows, beautifully curving lips, VO5 commercial rich hair...