"Grace, come here! There's a sinister-looking kid I want you to see!"
I admit, that great Simpsons gag was what kept popping in my sugar-addled brain as my mind wandered during Rear Window's dull stretches. I'm surprised by my reaction to this rewatch as I remember enjoying it much more than I did this time around.
A story which could be told in 90 minutes is inflated to nearly two hours and I understand why. The long runtime is part of the mechanism to discredit James "Jimmy" Stewart's crackpot theory about his weird jewelry salesman neighbor and the mysterious disappearance of the man's wife. The film goes out of its way to convince you that Stewart is wrong and everything is either misconstrued or just an odd coincidence. Yet the first 30 minutes are mired by Oscar-nominee John Michael Hayes' overly-mannered dialogue and a lackadaisical pace. Of course, once the actual plot gets going, the film improves marginally.
The acting is solid (Thelma Ritter is particularly amusing as an audience surrogate), the production design is justly famous, and Stewart and Grace Kelly (whose first appearance is very much shot as if she's a goddess) have a fine rapport in a relationship that does have an emotional impact. Stewart's look of admiration when Kelly suggests a risky move feels as though he's seeing her for the first time. And speaking of looks, Raymond Burr's sudden stare directly into the camera is chilling. Make no mistake, the last 30 minutes are terrifically suspenseful and make the earlier bits feel like a slow-burn, which in a way it is. I just wish the pace were a bit swifter and some of the lengthier dialogue scenes had gotten to their point faster.
Comments