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Rear Window (Universal Legacy Series) Starring: Bennie Bartlett, Sara Berner, Raymond Burr, Frank Cady, Iphigenie Castiglioni $19.99 Features:
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Editorial Review:
One of Alfred Hitchcock's most suspenseful screen achievements, Rear Window, is now available in a new 2-disc Special Edition DVD! When a professional photographer (James Stewart) suspects his neighbor of murdering his nagging wife, he enlists his socialite girlfriend (Grace Kelly) to help investigate the suspicious chain of events.
Honored in AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies for excellence in film, Rear Window has also been hailed as "one of Alfred Hitchcock's most stylish thrillers" (Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide). With in-depth bonus features and a digitally remastered picture, this set showcases a cinematic masterpiece that continues to entertain audiences around the world.
Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder.
Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.
Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbors' lives.
At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0 
3 stars out of 4: 
The Bottom Line:
Though Rear Window is often acclaimed as one of Hitchcock's best, it comes up short in the suspense department (it's fairly obvious how things are going to proceed) and thus stands as a technically proficient thriller that embraces conventions instead of transcending them.
Poor Casting for Kelly, Poor Writing for Hitch: 
I am a big fan of both Grace Kelly and Alfred Hitchcock, but I really think this film is ridiculous. We are made to believe that somehow this photographer (Stewart) is holed up in his shoddy back-alley apartment due to an injury, but his gorgeous socialite girlfriend (Kelly) is not at all averse to hanging out there constantly. She looks as out of place as a Tiffany lamp in a public restroom. There is also a ridiculous attempt at sexualizing Kelly, involving her showing Stewart a piece of not-so-revealing...more info
a completely original suspense masterpiece!: 
One of the most original films ever made! A man in a wheelchair, with a leg in a cast is trapped in his Greenwich Village one room apartment, watching his neighbours through the window onto a courtyard, during a heat wave in the summer. Sometimes what you see, you don't believe and what you believe you don't see and that can be murder. The set-up and premise of the film is outstanding and completely original. With excellent dialogue and excellently mounted scenes without dialogue, Hitchcock enters the...more info
No Dream Sequence PLEASE:
The Dream Sequence referred to in the last review was never part of the original film. It was inserted by local television stations in a lame attempt to recapitulate the plot for those who had tuned in late. Exactly the kind of butchering that should be prevented by copywright laws. The current restoration is completely faithful to the original film.
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