The voice you hear is generated, and the words are the ones printed below. Read along if you like.
1954 · Film
Every window across the courtyard is a small film of its own, and Hitchcock lets you watch all of them at once from a single chair.
James Stewart is a photographer confined to his apartment with a broken leg, Grace Kelly is the elegant woman who visits in the evenings and wants more from him than a seat by the window, and Thelma Ritter, as his nurse, supplies the best lines. With nothing to do but look, he starts watching the neighbours across the courtyard, and one of those windows begins to suggest something terrible. The whole film stays inside that apartment and that courtyard. The confinement is the point: we are as stuck as he is, and as curious.
What lifts it above a clever thriller is how much of it is about looking at someone you love. Kelly is luminous and the film knows it, while Stewart keeps turning back to the glass as if the real story must be out there, and the slow way he learns otherwise is as gripping as the mystery. It is tense to the final minutes, it is funny, and it is quietly tender. Watch it with someone, in the dark, with the curtains drawn. Watch them too.
VERDICT · Hitchcock’s most romantic thriller, a film about watching that rewards close attention and a seat beside someone worth looking at.
POUR · A rye Manhattan, one each.
Pairs with: Watching Rear Window Together
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