Rear Window (1954)

This voyeuristic film is loved by many – James Stewart plays a news photographer who’s been confined to a wheelchair in his apartment which gives him a view of a courtyard & into the apartments of many residents and their lives. His nurse (Thelma Ritter) and fiancée (Grace Kelly) become drawn in also and begin watching as well. Things get particularly interesting when they start to suspect that one particular neighbor (Raymond Burr) has bumped off his wife. Like the character Stewart portrays director Alfred Hitchcock uses his camera such that it becomes the real star in the film creating many scenes which reveal the character(s) in the windows. And his characteristic "black humor" abounds right to the very end. Wendell Corey plays a dubious police detective. The film received four Academy Award nominations: for Best Director Color Cinematography Sound Recording and John Michael Hayes’s Screenplay (his first Oscar nomination) which was based on a novelette by Cornell Woolrich. Hitchcock also received a Directors Guild of America nomination. Added to the National Film Registry in 1997. #42 on AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies list; #14 on AFI’s 100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies list.

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