I can definitely see why Rear Window is on AFI’s top 100 films of all time list. The amount of suspense and thrill that can be captured through a single window is incredible.
While a professional photographer is basically imprisoned in his apartment with a broken leg, he has a lot more time to do, well, pretty much nothing because you can’t do much with a broken leg and a wheelchair. What else is a guy to do with a big picture window and tons of time on his hands beside spy on other people? At first, looking into other’s lives is quite boring for Jeff. Besides the usual happenings, there is nothing too interesting to devote much attention to.
Then, the story of Lars Thorwarld and his wife begins to unfold. First of all, his name is creepy to begin with, so there’s that, but Jeff also begins to suspect that he murdered his wife. However, nobody believes him at first, and I don’t quite blame them. Who would believe a guy who has been stuck in his apartment for several weeks? He may have been a little stir crazy. Although nobody really believes Jeff, he continues to closely watch Lars. Mr. Thorwald does act quite strangely at times, and it’s hard to ignore the fact that the his wife hasn’t been seen in awhile. Either Lars murdered her because she was annoying him, or she was bedridden for multiple days with a plaguing illness, even though no doctor came. Lars Thorwald also takes many mysterious trips in the middle of the night carrying a super creepy metal briefcase, not to mention he was cleaning butcher knives in his kitchen. I kind of wish that they didn’t make it so obvious with the knives. He was clearly wiping blood off of them. I like when there could be two possible situations to his behavior. I guess he could have been an avid knife collector, but I’m don’t think so.
In my opinion, Jeff does some pretty risky things, and makes other people do risky things in order to learn more about the Thorwalds. He recruits his girlfriend to slip and note under his door while he is in the apartment, and he also calls him asking Lars to meet him at a bar to get him out of his house. Of course Mr. Thorwald had no idea it was his fellow neighbor because caller ID wasn’t invented back then. That tactic wouldn’t technically work today. He also sends his girlfriend into the apartment to steal a ring of his wife’s, which if he really loved her he would have known it probably wasn’t the safest idea, because she got caught.
I love how although there is the main story of Mr Thorwald murdering his wife, there are also a number of other lives that are followed through their windows. We see Miss Lonelyhearts whose love life is perfectly explained by her last name, and the ballet dancer who basically lives her life like she’s on a stage the whole time. Although they were not fully explained or developed, these stories added extra depth and different elements to the main story. I personally think it would have been boring if it only followed Lars Thorwald. I also really liked how they never went inside Lars’ apartment, it was kind of annoying at times, but it gave a different and interesting perspective. I think that is one of the main reasons this film was shot this way. To show that a murder mystery does not have to be all about the action and violence, and blood. In this movie, some of those same elements and feelings were captured by just looking through a window almost the whole time.