Rear Window Summary and Review

 

The film Rear Window starts out by overviewing a neighborhood and seeing what people living in the neighborhood are doing.  The camera eventually gets to LB Jefferies, the main character of the film, sitting in a wheelchair with a cast around his left leg.  He later explains while talking to a friend on the phone that he broke his leg taking pictures of a race car, when he himself was struck by a car, which caused him to break his leg.  Since Jefferies has been confined to his room since he broke his leg, he has spent most of his time watching what his neighbors have been doing, and that’s most of the scenes in this movie.  The movie is also shown from Jefferies’ perspective, either in scenes where he is shown talking to Lisa, his girlfriend, or Stella, his other friend, in his room, or from his own viewpoint when he is watching the neighbors from his window. 

Around the middle of the film, he starts observing Lars Thorwald more closely, as he becomes suspicious of him because of the most recent activities that Jefferies has seen him doing.  He was told that Lars’ wife had been put on a train to a different town by Lars himself from his friend Thomas Doyle, a lieutenant, but Jefferies thinks otherwise.  He later is convinced that Lars murdered his wife because she was no longer in her bed, and Lars had taken off the sheets and had begun going through her personal belongings.  He also convinces Lisa of this after she sees Lars with his wife’s purse and jewelry, and from her viewpoint, she doesn’t think that a woman would leave her purse and jewelry behind if she had moved away.  Jefferies ask Doyle to investigate the situation, but he doesn’t find anything that would point to a murder, and he concludes that Lars is clean.  This makes Jefferies question if watching the neighbors from the window is ethical, and Lisa convinces him that he should be glad that Lars’ wife wasn’t murdered. 

However, Lisa and Jefferies see that one of the neighbors’ dogs had been killed, and they believe it was because the dog dug into Lars’ garden because there was something there, which could be evidence of a murder.  Lisa and Stella go into Lars’ garden when Lars isn’t there while Jefferies observes the situation.  They find nothing in the garden, so Lisa breaks into Lars’ apartment to get some evidence of the murder but is caught by Lars when he gets back into the apartment.  Jefferies calls the police to bail her out, but she gets arrested for breaking into the apartment, but she does retrieve the wife’s wedding ring.  Jefferies calls Doyle about the situation and Doyle bails Lisa out, but then Lars then sees Jefferies watching him from the window, and he eventually gets into Jefferies apartment.  Lars attempts to kill Jefferies, but the police get there, and Jefferies survives.  The movie ends with Jefferies still in the wheelchair but with two broken legs, and everyone in the neighborhood having a good time.

There are a lot of things that this movie does well.  For one, the decision to tell the story from Jefferies’ perspective was a very good move, as it makes sure the audience doesn’t know too much about the plot, only was Jefferies knows.  This also allows the plot to develop more slowly, which works for the type of film that this is.  The film also portrays social norms of the 50s well.  Lisa is a great example of this, as they portray women of the 50s as very good looking, and attention needing, through Lisa’s character and scenes that she is in.  There were also some flaws in the film.  I felt that the first half of the film dragged on for a while because there wasn’t much happening up until Jefferies starts investigating the murder.  There was also a scene at the end of the film where it sped up and the scene looked a little goofy.  Otherwise, I did enjoy the film, and that it was a very good film for its time, though I don’t believe it would hold up well in modern filmmaking.