Among the greatest pleasures I have experienced while going to the movies is to see classic films of the past on the big screen.  This afternoon I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I’ve seen it before in a theatre, when it was re-released in 1983, and again when it was restored in 2000.  It’s a great thriller by a brilliant director (it’s his second best film by my reckoning) that everyone should see, preferably in a theater, where it was designed to be shown.  There’s nothing else quite like it.

Rear Window, of course, is the ultimate voyeur experience, as a photographer with a broken leg (James Stewart) is stuck in his balmy apartment with nothing else to do but look out its windows at his neighbors.  One of them begins to act suspiciously and Stewart wonders why he hasn’t seen the man’s wife around lately.  Stewart and his elegant girlfriend (Grace Kelly) and his nosy therapist (Thelma Ritter) all become convinced that the neighbor (Raymond Burr) has murdered that wife, and they take drastic steps to prove it, which puts them in harm’s way, too.

Hitchcock loved the challenge of a film staged on one large set, seen largely from one viewpoint.  He is at his most creative, utilizing deep focus shots, source music, vertical spacing and, in the second half, a gradual increase of pace to build and sustain suspense like no one else.  While the film is dated in many respects now it remains a masterpiece of human nature and a thrilling experience to behold.  Every time I see it I am reminded just how brilliant Hitchcock could be, especially when he worked with talent like James Stewart, Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter.

Stewart is terrific, of course, but the finest performance is delivered by Hitchcock’s most fabulous blonde, Grace Kelly.  Kelly only made eleven feature films and three of them were for Hitchcock, this being the second, and best of the three.  Not only does Kelly look like a fashion model but her character has the smarts and the gumption to prove Stewart wrong when he feels she could never share his life of adventure.  It’s Kelly’s movie just as much as Stewart’s, and that is all to the good.

This is the first four-star review I’ve had in 2015; hopefully there will be others.  But this is a wonderful prod to spend one’s time watching the really, really good stuff, especially when it happens to show up at one’s local theater.  Thank Fathom Events for that, because the days of revival house theaters are long gone in most places. Movies this good are why movie fans exist, so be sure to see these classics one way or another, whether it be DVD or streaming or plain old television broadcast.  Or, as in this case, an honest-to-goodness movie theater!  It’s eight more months to Christmas but I received my first present today.  ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆.  25 March 2015.