Made during Hitchcock’s Hollywood years, Rear Window stars James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr. A resident of Greenwich Village, L. B. Jefferies, played by James Stewart, takes to watching the comings and goings of his many neighbors after an injury confines him to a wheelchair for a period of convalescence. As he watches the daily activities in his neighborhood, Jefferies becomes convinced that a neighbor has murdered his wife and has covered up the crime. An invalid, Jefferies is limited in his ability to investigate this hunch. He is forced to rely upon his own observations and the aid of his companion Lisa, played by Grace Kelly, to figure out what happened in the apartment across the way. Through old-fashioned investigative work, Jefferies and Lisa uncover and expose the neighbor’s nefarious activities, including a near-perfect murder.

Rear Window exemplifies Hitchcock’s ability to create tension, suspense, and extensive character development within a limited framework. The overt voyeurism of the main character, incapacitated by a broken leg, becomes much more than a narrative gimmick, for Hitchcock uses this habitual watching to create not only a storyline but also a mood and a style. Hitchcock’s skillful use of the camera traps the viewer in the apartment with Jefferies, for the camera never moves from the space in which the character himself is confined. In this way, the viewer is able to sympathize with Jefferies’s motivations, experiencing the same sorts of doubts, bouts of curiosity, and fear that the character does.