Line #3 YMMV/RearWindow


1	* AdaptationDisplacement: The film is easily more famous than its source material ''It Had to Be Murder'', a short story written by Cornell Woolrich. Due to the film's greater popularity, newer editions of the original story now carry the title ''Rear Window'' instead.
2	* AwardSnub: The film received four UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nominations, but not Best Picture. Creator/JamesStewart and Creator/GraceKelly also weren't nominated for their performances. Kelly was nominated that year for ''Film/TheCountryGirl''.
3	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Some of the unnamed characters Jeff spies on exceed some of the main cast members in popularity despite declining in prominence once the murder mystery gets underway and only having dialogue in a few scenes.
4	** Miss Torso, for being a MsFanservice character with some HiddenDepths.
5	** The couple with the dog (and the dog itself) provide some pretty memorable aspects of the movie.
6	* EsotericHappyEnding: The film ends on a somewhat wry note by never concluding whether Lisa will be able to join Jeff in his globe-hopping lifestyle. What goes unacknowledged is the question of whether Jeff will ever be able to return to that life. He's still recovering from a broken leg when he breaks ''both'' legs in the end. Given that he's not a young man and that he's relying on 1954 medical science, one must wonder if he will ever regain full mobility.
7	* HilariousInHindsight:
8	** Stella tells Jeff she realized the stock market was about to crash in 1929 when she was nursing a director of General Motors. She figured out his problem was mostly nerves. "When General Motors is nervous, the whole country's ready to let go." This got a ''lot'' of laughs from audiences watching the film in 2010, after GM filed bankruptcy.
9	** Stella questions how Thorwald would've killed his wife. "Of course, the bathtub! It's the only place he could've washed the blood!" What other Hitchcock film was released six years after ''Rear Window''? ''Film/{{Psycho}}''.
10	** After being the target of an inquisitive wheelchair-bound man here, Raymond Burr went on to play a wheelchair-bound detective on ''[[Series/Ironside1967 Ironside]]''.
11	* JustHereForGodzilla:
12	** To see Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., aka [[Franchise/AlvinAndTheChipmunks David 'Dave' Seville]].
13	** Leaving aside the plot, the viewer can enjoy the film just for the dialogue and chemistry between Creator/JamesStewart and Creator/GraceKelly.
14	* ParanoiaFuel: Are your neighbors who you think they are? Could they be watching your every move through your window?
15	* SpecialEffectFailure:
16	** In one of the first scenes, a helicopter appears to be moving in a funny fashion. It looks like the helicopter was shot on handheld cam, whereas the buildings around it are stable like it's shot with a tripod.
17	** [[spoiler:Jeff falling out of the window looks unmistakably like a chroma key effect.]] Plus, when everyone runs out into the courtyard to see this, it seems pretty obvious that they filmed the scene at normal speed and sped it up in post. In the DVD commentary, John Fawell argues that this scene is not meant to be taken realistically, however, but that it is impressionistic, and meant to convey [[spoiler: the nightmarish qualities of the scene, where the voyeuristic fantasy suddenly intrudes upon reality, and the fall reflects the "vertiginous horror of a fall, the dream or nightmare of a fall."]] Fawell points out that Hitchcock shot many of these kinds of fall scenes, and did not always go for realism in his scenes.
18	* ThirdActStupidity: Both Mr Thorvald and Jeff are gripped by this during the final confrontation:
19	** Thorvald just realised that his neighbour [[HaveYouToldAnyoneElse told several people Thorvald doesn't know that he suspects Thorvald of murder, distributing his knowledge of incriminating evidence (as well as the evidence itself) to said strangers]], sending strangers to snoop around at the crime scene ''and'' even sicced the cops on him just a few minutes ago, almost getting him arrested for assault. [[IResembleThatRemark Trying to kill his neighbour at this point is probably the most suspicious thing Thorvald could try to do]], though it is justified by the fact that Thorvald is in the middle of a VillainousBreakdown and clearly not thinking straight.
20	** Jeff, on the other hand, freezes in his wheelchair for an exceedingly long time when he realises that Thorvald is coming for him in his apartment, neither trying to arm himself nor lock the apartment door (a feat that, owing to the broken leg, would be painful, but not impossible).
21	** When Thorvald confronts him and asks about his demands (clearly under the impression that Jeff is blackmailing him and offering to sell his silence), Jeff doesn't try to play along in order to buy time, but instead infuriates the unstable wife-killer by confessing that the police has ''already'' been informed and that there's nothing he can do about it, practically inviting violent retaliation.
22	** Eventually, Jeff has to settle for fighting Thorvald off with a camera flash-lamp, which works about as well as expected, though Thorvald still manages to let himself get blinded ''four'' times in a row. Apparently, it does not occur to him that he could simply squint or close his eyes.
23	* TheUnTwist: Jeff is a paranoid invalid who becomes convinced that his neighbor is a murderer based on nothing but a few chance observations with a telescopic lens. In the end, his theory is 100% correct in every detail.
24	* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: When Jeff watches Lisa get attacked by Thorwald, he prioritizes his own safety above Lisa's by remaining silent. Rather than shout at Thorwald to alert the neighbors or distract Thorwald, Jeff stays in darkness and speaks in a whisper, even going as far as to stop Stella from raising an alarm. It's only luck that the cops arrive in time to save her. This can come across as quite cowardly.
25	* ValuesDissonance: It's 1954, and Jeff and Lisa having a physical relationship is considered scandalous. Jeff isn't allowed to have female guests spend the night at his apartment. When Doyle pieces together what's happening, Jeff gets very serious and warns him not to even acknowledge it.
26	* ValuesResonance: The owner of the murdered dog has a rant about how hardly anyone in the neighborhood really communicates with one another or seem to care about each other and how her dog was "the only thing that ever liked anybody!" Fast forward about 60 years and people have more distractions from genuine human communication (especially neighbors) in the forms of social media, sensationalism, bile media, and popular entertainment.

Context YMMV / RearWindow