Rear Window

Rear Window is magnificent for a multitude of reasons. It has withstood the test of time, and no facet has lost an ounce of effectiveness. As a primer into Hitchcock’s vast, varied, and essential oeuvre, it is the perfect starting point.

Perhaps the most elegant and satisfying of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers...

It's a great movie and it's a chance in a million to see a passionate Grace Kelly... She had so much class it would be easy to overlook that underlying heat which Hitchcock let play in this film.

Rear Window builds in a much more linear way, slowly creating tension bit by bit until the chilling final 10 minutes. It takes a long time to get there, but there is literally never a dull moment.

Sure, Vertigo is more personal, Psycho more bizarre, North by Northwest more thrilling. But Rear Window shows the Master of Suspense at his most spare, sophisticated and sinisterly clever a movie that is essentially about watching movies.

The most densely allegorical of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces, moving from psychology to morality to formal concerns and finally to the theological. It is also Hitchcock's most innovative film in terms of narrative technique.

Tightly scripted with clockwork precision and garlanded with bon mots: “She’s too perfect, she’s too talented, she’s too beautiful, she’s too sophisticated, she’s too everything but what I want.”

Rear Window may be the best of Hitchcock’s films. It has so many devious moves and machinations, but doesn’t ever leave the single location it’s in.

A clear game of suspense. [Full review in Spanish]

Mixing drama, with a bit of dry comedy, and the thriller elements to which Hitchcock had accustomed us, "Rear Window" is one of the best films of his filmography, and an interesting metatextual commentary on voyeurism. Full review in Spanish.