Rear Window

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film opens on Jeff, a photographer stuck in his apartment with his leg in a cast, watching the neighbours across the courtyard. The murder suspicion arrives late; the first stretch teaches you the ordinary routine behind each window, which is why a later deviation registers. The camera stays inside Jeff’s sightline, then breaks that rule on purpose: while he dozes, only the audience sees Thorwald leave with a woman, and you carry information the hero lacks. The courtyard was a set on Paramount’s Stage 18, thirty one apartments of it, with the yard dug below the stage floor. Hitchcock stayed in Jeff’s apartment throughout and spoke to the performers opposite by radio while they wore concealed earpieces. Almost all the music comes from inside the story, out of radios and a neighbour’s piano. The screenplay came from Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 story It Had to Be Murder, where neither Lisa nor the nurse Stella exists; John Michael Hayes invented both, which is why half the film is a couple negotiating marriage between murder observations. A good fit if you treat the long run of neighbour watching before any crime as the main material. Not for anyone who wants a score to steer the tension, since every sound here has a visible source in the courtyard.