Rear Window -- Even when you're alone, someone is looking.

The loneliness lays a veneer over the murder. 

There is something savage and aching about the loneliness in Rear Window. It’s less about death--although someone dies, but more about life and how inexplicable it often is. Rear Window resonates even more today because technology has made us less contemplative with more access to more stuff but less connection with real persons. Loneliness does not depend on death, yet death follows the lonely, advertising for them to rush headlong to the balcony and toss themselves over. Or, as is Hitchcock’s way, find someone to do it for you.

Loneliness shines light on the cracks in our self-sufficiency. We are not nearly as secure as think. Technology has made us accept mediocre relationships.

The unspoken joke is that only in the movies could a beauty like Lisa Carol Fremont (played by Grace Kelly) throw themselves at a stiff like L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart)  and he ‘can’t make up his mind whether he’s interested in her or not.” I’ve always found this amusing. Another way Hitchcock, toys with us.

There isn’t much humor in Rear Window. It’s dark...filled with anguish. It is about the loneliness and alienation that stalks us. It about how we crave acceptance and companionship, yet see it elusively slip just beyond our grasp.

Yes, there is a murder in Rear Window--but the murder is of less importance than what we learn about the characters—and, ourselves. Rear Window withstands multiple viewings because of the intricate nuances that permeate his work. It stands above “Vertigo” and “North by Northwest” because it unravels the voyeuristic tendencies that lives inside each of us…and, how those tendencies turn us inward, drawing us more into ourselves making us more vulnerable to the effects of alienation. Rear Window is not a cautionary tale—unless, of course, you live in an apartment complex with nosy neighbors and have a penchant for murder.