Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or...

New York CityWe spend the whole of the movie in Jeff's small apartment somewhere in Greenwich Village, New York City. This isn't a mistake. Hitchcock really wants to put us in his protagonist's sho...

First Person The film is a traditional chronological narrative—no flashbacks or flash-forwards, no postmodern jumping around or playing with concepts of time and space.Technically, we're bending...

Mystery, Thriller, Romance, ComedyMysteries and thrillers are genre cousins, but they're not the same thing. A thriller uses the specific circumstances of a story to generate excitement or suspense...

The title is basically a descriptor: Jeff peeps on his neighbors through the rear window of his apartment, and the view through that window is the audience's, too—it's all we've got.Rear Window a...

The best thing about the ending isn't that Thorwald is in jail and our lovers are back together but the way Hitchcock wraps up all of the stories we've watched unfold through that window. Just as t...

PG-13The 1950s were the days of the Hays Code, which dictated everything a movie could show us. The code was mostly prohibitive of sexual themes and images; violence just had to be handled with "sp...