best movie i've ever seen.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Rear Window was a wonderful movie that more than fits into Hitchcock's portfolio of masterpieces.Personally I have trouble categorizing this movie into a single genre as it is so diverse. With this said this movie certainly used certain elements from multiple genres. One of these genres that the film certainly borrowed from was film noir. One of the biggest conflicts of the film was whether or not Thorwald killed his wife. Even I as a viewer was unsure if this was the case while I was watching it. Although Rear Window's setting might've been too trusting and almost lush for it to be considered hard boiled, this movie certainly was a crime drama with certain romantic elements. Additionally this movie has many elements of a suspense film. I know personally I was sitting on the edge of my seat while Lisa was going into Thorwald's apartment, as well as when Thorwald had entered Jeff's. However I personally don't believe there was enough suspense throughout the entire movie for it to be outright considered a full-out thriller movie.Alfred Hitchcock claimed to be a formalist director at heart and that really showed in the film. The movie used continuity editing so that it was easy for the viewer to sympathize with the protagonist, where as if he used non-continuity here the viewer might get confused and might emotionally disconnect from the protagonist. Additionally at the beginning of the movie and at the end of the movie the pacing of the cuts is very slow to show that there is very little tension. At the climax of the film the pacing is much faster to express a new sense of urgency and tension. The shots used in the film and the camera techniques were unlike many other movies. This first scene in this film was a long panning shot of Jeff's backyard showing off a unique assortment of happy individuals from both in and outside their apartments. I think this opening shot really impressed me because this scene not only conveyed who many of the individual characters and families in this neighborhood were, but it also did a really good job of making this neighborhood seem especially open and trusting. One of the major plot points of this movie is that the protagonist, Jeff, is looking at his neighbors through their apartment windows. To compliment this most of the shots in the film, were framed by Jeff's window sill. Like I said before the viewer throughout the film felt like they were watching from Jeff's point of view, where they could see what was happening around them but they were stuck in their seats and unable to affect anything. Hitchcock was able to build this sympathy also by showing an event happening outside of the window and then showing a close up on one of the protagonists so that they know how to feel about these events.This film also focused in on the certain themes and successfully raised a lot of questions about them throughout it. One of the themes that was brought up was community. At the beginning of the movie, the neighborhood that Jeff lived in was portrayed as being, perhaps a bit more friendly than most but overall unextraordinary. You felt like if you knew any one of those neighbors you'd be friends with them. But later in the film, obviously this sense of community is betrayed as one of the neighbors finds their dog strangled to death. Hitchcock often leaves his audience afraid of things people have come to trust in his films like in his other classic, the birds. Additionally this movie seems to revolve around Voyeurism which in this case is the pleasure one gets from watching people who don't know that they are being watched. This movie shows both positive and negative outcomes from Jeff's "peeping" so the question is left up in the air. However some viewers got a sense that the voyeurism Hitchcock was referring to wasn't staring at unsuspecting people through a window, but rather staring at characters through a movie.All in all I was absolutely in love with the cinematography and am looking forward to watching the rest of Hitchcock's films.

Rear window is such a unique and interesting movie. It is one that almost stands alone in its plot and camera angles and things of that sort. During the first twenty to thirty minutes of this movie it was almost extremely boring and I kept constantly asking myself the same question over and over again, which is "are they really going to keep the camera in this one room for the whole movie?" I kept on telling myself that the camera would probably move sometime soon and they would change scenery sometime soon, but that time just never came. Throughout the film it took sometime for me to actually accept the new movie style that Hitchcock portrays in this film. During this film I went through almost 3 different stages of interest. The first stage consisted mostly of confusion and trying to figure out what was going on as they were introducing the different characters and scenarios. It was a very new movie feel for me so it took time to get used to. The second phase for me was unfortunately boredom, as I couldn't really engage into what was being played out in the different apartments. It wasn't until the end of the movie, about the time when the dog is found dead with its neck snapped that I really started to enjoy and became engaged in the film. The ending was very engaging and was extremely well done. It created an excellent sense of tension and suspense that I think engages every single viewer. During the whole process of watching the movie I can't really say I enjoyed it at all but once I looked back on it and realized the different cinematic elements and styles I came to appreciate it and understand it more. I definitely have a strong bias here because I was born into a generation of such great quality cameras and such good editing and animation. For this reason it can be really hard for me to engage in older movies of this style. Nonetheless this movie was very interesting to look back on and see how Hitchcock portrayed the characters in such an interesting way. It was so different and cool to basically see people as non-actors but just as every day people. You really get a sense of this when the movie is portraying someone in their everyday life without them supposedly knowing that they are being watched. You see the pureness of every shot. This film really enacts a different feeling in the viewer, as it is something were really not used to seeing. Overall I cant really say that I enjoyed this movie to much as I found it slightly boring and un-engaging. There are many great cinematic elements that make it very different and interesting. The whole stationary camera sense was just two different for me and I was able to really appreciate and enjoy the movie very much.

'Rear Window' is a prime example of taking a simple idea and making it a masterpiece. The film manages to appeal to a broad range of our emotions including suspense, romance, and excitement thanks to the creative yet simple way it is filmed and directed. Right away the film begins by familiarizing the viewers with the scene where most of the story takes place, by showing us the busy view outside of Jefferies rear window. Each neighbor has an interesting and unique personality that makes it really feel like any of them could be the the main subject of the story. They're all cleverly named to match their personalities and it makes it very easy for the viewer to associate themselves with them by name almost immediately. For a film that has such a small set, it makes the best of it by really making all of the other apartments come to life with their own unique quirks and lifestyles that we get to see through the lense of Jefferies rear window. The first act of the film mostly focuses on the life of all the neighbors and the relationship between Lisa and Jefferies. By doing this the viewer really becomes comfortable and familiar with all of the characters to the point of understanding them and their feelings. It is an interesting love story between Jefferies and Lisa. Lisa is in love with Jeff, and Jeff seems to think that she is too good and too perfect to be with a guy like her. I think this is a wonderful way to introduce the viewers to the main characters of the story and make them feel involved in the outcome of their situation. It is right when it seems like there is much more to come between Jeff and Lisa that the story seems to have a sudden dramatic shift in tone, to more of a crime mystery film that is filled with suspense. It is in this portion of the movie where the way it is filmed really makes the viewer feel connected to the story. Jeff, who has been sitting in his window watching his neighbors lives very closely begins to notice something is out of place one night when he spots Mr. Thorwald leaving his apartment a few times very late at night. Since almost all of what the viewers have seen is through the eyes of Jefferies, we are inclined to also have the same biases and train of thought as him as well. So any conclusions he makes, it is easy for us to agree with him.The film does a great job of having the viewer question if Jefferies is right or not when in introduces the character Detective Doyle. This is the first time we get to see someones opinion on the possible crime that isn't from our narrowed perspective we get from Jefferies. To me this was when it started to become more and more apparent that everything we had been learning about Thorwald and the criminal picture Jefferies had been painting of him could have been wrong. I think this forced perspective we are given is one of the most beautiful elements of the film and it all leads up to the end where we are in Jefferies apartment listening for footsteps outside the door, fearing for our lives. As viewers we become almost one with Jefferies, so we feel the same rushes of emotion as him as well. This perspective is what allowed Alfred Hitchcock to take a beautifully simple story, but use the power of a film camera to really make it a wonderful story with a cast of beautifully individual characters and stories as seen through the eyes of our main character.

This is likely to go down as the least popular user-comment in history, but then so be it. I believe in honesty and freedom of speech. Although universally considered as one of the top three (or maybe top five) best thrillers that Alfred Hitchcock made in his lengthy and undeniably brilliant career, I personally feel that "Rear Window" is the most overrated movie of all times and I sincerely can't fathom why it's such a cinematic landmark. I reckon that the basic plot idea is utmost intriguing and that it's rather inventive how the cameras film literally everything from within the same secluded living room location, but that about sums up all the film's strengths. The narcistic photographer L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) sits immobilized in his apartment, bound to both a wheelchair and a humongous plaster cast around his leg ever since he took too much risk during a photo shoot on a racetrack. Purely out of boredom, he begins to watch all his neighbors across the little cement garden. The watching quickly turns into observing with binoculars and then into spying with his most professional & strongest photo lenses. He then thinks he witnesses a middle-aged man murdering his wife in cold blood, but a befriended police inspector, his lovely girlfriend and even his nosy housekeeper have trouble believing him. I was particularly annoyed by the behavior and ignorance of the protagonist. Jeff is supposed to be an intelligent person, so he must understand or at least respect that the police can't just go invading someone's private property and interrogate them about a possibly felony for which there isn't any evidence. The entire film evidently revolves on L.B. Jefferies' arrogant persona, and of course it doesn't help that I never really liked the actor James Stewart. I can appreciate him when his characters aren't omnipresent, like in Hitchcock's "Rope" for example, but here he was rapidly getting on my nerves. The other characters, including Grace Kelly who never looked prettier, are downgraded to mere extras. I am also aware that practically every review praises that the powerful impact of "Rear Window" lies in the fact that it's a statement on the human towards voyeurism and blah blah, but to me a film has to be entertaining and plausible first and foremost. "Read Window" along with "Vertigo" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" made me realize that can't get into Hitch's espionage or 'wrong-man-condemned' thrillers, and that I find his more polished thrillers extremely boring, unrealistic and overrated. I'm primarily a horror fanatic, and thus love the nasty Hitchcock films the most, like "Psycho", "Shadow of a Doubt", "Rope" and "Frenzy".