L. B. Jefferies, a photographer confined to his apartment with a broken leg, watches his neighbours through a rear window — and becomes convinced he has witnessed a murder.
In Rear Window (1954), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart plays L. B. Jefferies, a news photographer who is laid up with a broken leg in his Greenwich Village apartment. With little else to do, he watches the people across the courtyard, and he becomes suspicious of Lars Thorwald, a travelling salesman whose wife has suddenly disappeared. His girlfriend Lisa Fremont, played by Grace Kelly, and his nurse Stella, played by Thelma Ritter, are drawn into his investigation.
Stewart is superb as a man who is both a hero and a voyeur. He makes Jefferies’ curiosity understandable, and his growing fear, as Thorwald realises he is being watched, is palpable. Hitchcock keeps the camera largely inside Jefferies’ apartment, so the audience shares his limited view, and Stewart’s reactions carry the suspense.
Rear Window is one of Hitchcock’s most perfectly constructed films, and Stewart’s performance as Jefferies is central to its power: an ordinary man, trapped in a chair, who must act when no one else will.