Rear Window

Embarrassingly, this is my first Hitchcock film and my first pre-90s film seen in a local theater. The dialogue was much wittier and playful than I imagined, which was a pleasant surprise. The cinematography of the neighborhood was gorgeous, while sometimes haunting. The glowing puff of the cigarette in the dark is one of my new favorite images in cinema ever. Every character in the neighborhood was captivating, though my favorite was the nurse, Stella. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Grace Kelly's performance and character. The dance between private and public perception sometimes made me feel like I was a voyeur in the window with Jimmy Stewart, waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night to peek a little longer at the neighbors. But other times I felt glued to the center of a panopticon, where others are constantly staring back at me while I look out so that I remember to behave myself in the eyes of the public and when I think I'm alone. The death of privacy and the birth of a surveillance state in the U.S. is both celebrated and mourned in Rear Window's cinematic form.