Rear Window
Probably the first film that made me turn a voyeur, not just as an observer but as a participant. Can’t believe I had this moral obligation to criticize voyeurism in past films and Alfred Hitchcock was like, hold my beer, and he made me toss what’s left of my morality out of the Rear Window. And to actually want the murder to have happened just so Jeffries could be right was the icing on the cake. This film flipped the knife on me and set up a psychological trap that I wasn’t ready to come out of.
And that speaks to the genius of Alfred Hitchcock. To immerse the audience into the world of voyeurism and even share the moral compromise of the protagonist is something rarely achieved by the auteurs in this industry.
And what’s with this old Hollywood’s obsession with casting a senior citizen as a love interest to a young beautiful woman. I don’t have a problem with it, it’s just a pattern I’ve seen again and again in classical Hollywood cinema.
Beautiful work of art. One of those classics that transcends the screen