When I was a freshman in college, I lived in a very small, cozy dorm across the street from a large, modern one that was like an aquarium—the outward facing wall of each apartment was entirely glass. It was like my own Rear Window situation, and some quiet evenings I would look out my window and observe the various rooms I could see. One was draped in color-changing lights that were on all day and night, and the person who lived there seemed to never be home. One had their desk against the window and a few potted plants. Others kept their shades drawn most of the time. I rarely saw the actual residents, more just wondered about them based on their living spaces…3 rooms to the right from the rainbow-lit room, two windows down…that was a difficult and complicated year for me, and sometimes mundane things like people watching made me feel a little less alone.

This movie has held a firm place at the top of my Hitchcock rankings and in my top 5 favorite movies, but the truth is I had only seen it once, it was the first Hitchcock I ever watched, and it's been probably 10 years at least. I really didn't have a clear memory of the film until I now finally re-watched it with two friends (who had also seen it before), which was fun because it sort of mirrored the dynamic of Jeff, Lisa, and Stella and their allegorical representation of the movie audience. There's something about Rear Window that has maybe even grown more relevant with time and technology, and again with all the extra time many of us have spent at home this year. The potential allegory of voyeurism and movies is magnified in the existence of social media, although in film and online we only see what people want to show us, not their private and vulnerable moments.

And that's why this movie is so masterfully crafted, with the camera stuck in Jeff's apartment, setting up through neighboring apartment windows exactly what our laid-up protagonist needs to feed his imagination, candid moments from an assortment of authentic characters living their private lives at home that are just enough to start weaving observations and assumptions into stories and uncovering truths. A languid build-up of passive observation turns into gathering evidence, speculating and putting pieces together, then the dominoes fall in a quickly escalating chain of events. It really does have a satisfying little set of resolutions not only for our murder suspect and main characters, but for all the people we have been watching through their windows as well. In a way the film seems so much simpler than I remembered, but the more I think about it, the more layers there are to peel back.

So does it hold up as my favorite Hitch, when there are so many that are good in different ways? I'd say so. It's not especially suspenseful or creepy like Strangers on a Train or Shadow of a Doubt, it's not so dark and complex as Vertigo, and it's not a mysterious adventure like North by Northwest or The Lady Vanishes. But Rear Window has a balanced recipe with bits of all of these signature Hitchcock ingredients: complex relationship dynamics, mystery, thrills, suspense, action. It's a vibrant study of characters, of observation and imagination, of discontent and private moments, expressions and reactions no one sees behind closed doors...unless your windows are wide open and your neighbor has a telephoto lens and nothing better to do...or you're a character in a movie.

I don’t know what it says about me that a few of my top 5 movies are Amélie, The Apartment, and Rear Window, but it seems like there are a lot of connections that could be drawn there. Living spaces as characters, voyeurism, getting invested in other people’s business, neglecting or distracting yourself from your own goals and desires, curiosity about people’s motivations and private lives, resigning yourself to solitude, trying to help others even if potentially misguided…I guess these are the human things I find most fascinating.