Rent Rear Window (1954)

Hitchcock at his best - Rear Window review by CB

It's all filmed on one set with the hero's bed - he's laid up with a broken leg - front and centre. He's a photographer and apartment bound so the action comes from the invalids various visitors. There's a murder, of course, but it is by no means a routine murder story.

It's 20+ years since I last watched it but it hasn't aged a bit. Sure, the hero's camera I an ancient manual thing, and the all-important flash bulbs are ancient too, but so what?

It's been fully restored. If you haven't seen it, it will keep you on the edge of your seat. The late, great Grace Kelly is a definitive bonus for the men and her AMAZING dress collection is a bonus for the women.

The Original Binge Watch - Rear Window review by griggs

We're all watching someone else's window, really — and in 1954, Hitchcock saw exactly where that was heading. Rear Window arrived just as television was colonising the living room, and it's hard not to read the film as a wry diagnosis — here's what we're becoming: a culture of passive spectators glued to other people's drama, channel-hopping between a newlywed couple, a lonely neighbour, and a man who may or may not have murdered his wife.

Jeff is laid up, bored, and doing what any of us would. Grace Kelly is radiant and criminally underused until suddenly she isn't, and Thelma Ritter steals every scene she wanders into. Everyone theorises about what's happening across the courtyard. Nobody quite knows what to do with what they've seen. Until they're forced to.

That's the film's quiet genius — a thriller about the gap between watching and acting, and Hitchcock makes you complicit in every lingering look.

Tense Classic Thriller - Rear Window review by GI

If you've ever doubted Alfred Hitchcock's credentials as a master of the suspense film then you haven't seen Rear Window. Shot completely on one set this is a classic Hollywood thriller with two top quality stars in James Stewart and Grace Kelly. He is L.B. 'Jeff' Jeffries, a renowned magazine photographer (consequently a snoop!), who has broken his leg and over a hot New York summer he's confined to a wheelchair in his apartment. Out of boredom he watches his neighbours going about their everyday business. Then one night, during a thunderstorm, he sees a man who lives opposite him acting suspiciously and after awhile Jeff begins to conclude the man has murdered and dismembered his nagging wife. As Jeff puts his pieces of the 'crime' together he also manages to convince his socialite girlfriend, Lisa (Kelly) of the murder but the police aren't so easily convinced and decide Jeff is fantasising. Hitchcock keeps you asking yourself did a murder happen or are all the clues innocently explained creating some great tension and with a twist surprise ending which I won't spoil in case you've never seen this wonderful film. With its look at the moral issues of voyeurism and privacy the film was ahead of its time and quite raunchy for an early 1950s film. Stewart is really good here, an actor of great range and proving it here in a role that requires mostly close ups and little movement. A must see film, a true masterpiece of the thriller genre.