Part of July's BIG PICTURE: PRESENTING ALFRED HITCHCOCK
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1h 52m / PG / Drama, Thriller
TRAILER:
VENUE: Historic Duncan Auditorium
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Photog L. B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is stuck in his apartment while he heals from a broken leg, with the assistance of his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) and nurse (Thelma Ritter). But a leopard can’t change its spots — the fact that he can’t get around at the moment doesn’t stop him from pointing his peepers at his neighbors. When he begins to suspect his neighbor of killing his wife, that voyeuristic habit threatens to spin him out of control. Can he uncover the truth before he loses everything?
And so we reach the conclusion of our Hitchcock exploration. Whether or not Rear Window is Alfred Hitchcock’s best movie is arguable. It’s undeniable, however, that it’s the movie where the whole Hitchcock thing was at its peak, the sensory and emotional concatenation that he ended up famous for. Besides the technical creativity and attention to detail (the entire courtyard and apartment complex was built on a Paramount studio set, in order to control every shot and maneuver into every nook and angle — they even built in a full drainage system for the rain sequence), there’s the dreamlike and uncanny tone, the artificiality not avoided but embraced. He treats tension and release less like the building of an orchestral score and more like the meshing teeth of gears, alternating anxiety and humor with metronomic regularity. For a thriller about stalking a suspected murderer, it’s got a surprising number of jokes. And there’s his mid-career hatred of falling action — the movie leaps into buildup, unbelievable thrills and excitement, then bang: climax, conclusion, and credits are rolling less than three minutes later. It makes sense conceptually, with the film built around tight plotting rather than character study. He’s only shows us a few days in the lives of these people. Who needs denouement?
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