1954 suspense, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Grace Kelly:
IMDb /
allmovie. Laid up after an
accident, photographer "Jeff" Jefferies becomes suspicious of the
goings-on in the apartment opposite.
For me this suffers from being regarded as a classic. It may well
have been very effective to its original audience; to me more than
seventy years later, the supposed tension never quite gets going.
Yeah, right, as if Hitchcock is going to kill off characters played by
James Stewart or Grace Kelly!
And perhaps because I was not as suspended as I should have been, I
couldn't help noticing how very male-gazey this film is. There's
frequently some young female flesh to be spied on, disapproval of this
is mild and jokey when it's present at all, and unlike Psycho (1960)
we don;t even have the excuse that these are bad people who will come
to a bad end.
James Stewart almost sells it, to be fair; it's Grace Kelly who feels
wasted here, reduced to just another in the parade of Hitchcock
blondes. There's the possibility of a real discussion about his
rackety life and her desire for domesticity, but they never even
contemplate the idea that he might go off on an assignment for a few
months, with her working in New York, as they have been doing for some
time, but as a married couple
Still, there's a lovely turn here by Thelma Ritter as Stella the
nurse; it's not just her no-nonsense attitude, it's the way she and
Stewart both give the impression of people who are entirely
comfortable with each other and familiar with the routine of daily
care visits by now, and who can work together to get it done without
needing to narrate every step.
I enjoyed it in the moment but alas, apart from some of the
performances, there's very little here that will stay with me.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of
#Memes.