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John Michael Hayes's Rear Window

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John Michael Hayes's Rear Window
Rear Window (1954) is an intriguing, brilliant, macabre Hitchcockian visual study of obsessive human curiosity and voyeurism. John Michael Hayes' screenplay was based on Cornell Woolrich's (with pen-name William Irish) original 1942 short story or novelette, It Had to Be Murder.

This film masterpiece was made entirely on one confined set built at Paramount Studios - a realistic courtyard composed of 32 apartments (12 completely furnished) - at a non-existent address in Manhattan (125 W. 9th Street). Each of the tenants of the other apartments offer an observant comment of marriage and a complete survey of male/female relationships (all the way from honeymooners to a murderous spouse), as the main protagonist watches / spies / spectates …show more content…
He struggles, as he does with his plaster cast, to overcome his noncommittal feelings and reluctance to get married to his high-fashion model fiancee-girlfriend (Grace Kelly). In the midst of the most tense situation in another context, she daringly flashes a wedding ring to him to clue him in with the …show more content…
B. "Jeff" Jefferies (James Stewart) the lead character, a successful globe-trotting action photographer for a magazine, who is confined to his apartment with a broken leg in a cast
(Ross Bagdasarian) a musical composer/songwriter who struggles to make an income
"Miss Torso" (Georgine Darcy) a sexy young dancer, who battles against numerous suitors
"Miss Lonelyhearts" (Judith Evelyn) a lonely, middle-aged woman, who drinks and takes pills
Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr in a pre-Perry Mason appearance) and wife Anna (Irene Winston) a hard-working, costume-jewelry traveling salesman living with his bedridden, nagging wife; Thorwald is suspected of a hideous murder, the killing and dismemberment of his
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