Yeah. Obviously the whole effects track wasn’t captured on boom mikes. 
Another neat thing about that movie is Thelma Ritter. She was in a lot of stuff, usually as the Odious Comic Relief, but I’ve never liked her better than in Rear Window.
[nitpick]
There is a shot of a traffic heli checking out sunbathers that was not done in the studio.
[/nitpick]
One of the many things I like about it is that RW has some of the most realistic NYC apartments in film ever. The size and layouts are very authentic.
Using only ‘natural’ sources for the music is a great trick. Of course making one of the neighbors a music composer who is working on a song is a great work around to have a repeating musical theme.
As far as the Home vs. theatre on of the most important shots is, for me, difficult to make out at home but shows up HUGE in a theatre. The shot of the glowing cigar in the dark apartment in a theatre is chilling.
Grace Kelly is wonderful but her costumes are absolutly perfect.
I also like how the side stories are basically love stories or love in different stages.
You have the honeymoon couple, the dance is waiting for her love to return, Ms. Lonelyheart is looking for love, the old comfortable married couple with the dog, the musician and the sculptor love their work. (even the carousel plays That’s Amore)
I am also amazed that the dancer in the movie would be considered way too fat by today’s standards.
Oh and I forgot my favorite thing about the film.
Personally I thought JS was NUTS to be turning Lisa down. But after all his talk about how she is too frail to travel with him and all that when he is hanging out the window and he sees everyone across the way who does he call first?
Police? There are half a dozen uniformed officers.
Doyal? His friend and war buddy?
Nope, he calls out LISA first.
Brillant way to illustrate the change in him.
I liked it a lot. I think it one of the few movies I have watched at home and stayed riveted to my seat.
And I think it deserves kudos for all the underlying questions and issues. I mean really JS’s character was pretty despicable spying on people like that… but then he solved a murder … so is he a hero or a pervert? And I like that there was no REAL answer to this shoved down your throat.
A couple of questions.
Did Hichcock have a cameo in RW? If yes where and when was it? I have never been able to see it.
He did have a cameo. He can be seen in the composer’s apt., looking over the musical score. I seem to remember that he then turns and looks straight at the camera (Jimmy S). It’s the only time a character notices JS until the killer does at the end.
BTW, this movie is in a 3 way tie for my favourite Hitchcock, along with North by Northwest and Vertigo. Grace Kelly positively glows and her slow motion kiss is one of my all-time favourite scenes.
Hitchcock can be seen in the pianist’s apartment.
Zebra: << I also like how the side stories are basically love stories or love in different stages. >>
Robin Wood points out that the Jimmy Stewart character does his viewing selectively. We get glimpses of “normal” families that Stewart is not interested in – for instance, when the little dog dies and the woman is crying out in anguish, on the far upper right, there’s a family (man, woman, child) who come out on the balcony to see what’s going on. We don’t see any more about them, because Jimmy Stewart isn’t interested in watching them – he’s only interested in watching people at the extremes.
He watches people who are single (the dancer, Miss Lonelyhearts) and whose lives are very lonely. He watches people whose marriages are awful (suffocating) such as the honeymoon couple, the couple doting on their dog, and of course the henpecked husband (Raymond Burr.)
(BTW, I’m not saying that being single always means being lonely, I’m saying that Stewart SELECTS only lonely singles to watch. As he selects only troubled marriages.)
In short, he’s undecided about what to do about Lisa. On the one hand, if he cuts the relationship and remains single, he worries that he will be lonely and in despair, like Miss Lonelyhearts. On the other hand, if he marries Lisa, he worries that he’ll wind up henpecked, his individuality smothered.
Robin Wood argues (and I agree) that this movie has depths of profundity that are not obvious on the surface.
BTW, the analogy of Jimmy Stewart to the movie audience is pretty clear. Movie audiences also view selectively, going only to the movies that they want to go to.
I was watching this film again last night, mostly to refresh my memory on when exactly Hitchcock make his cameo. (it’s about 25 minutes in, BTW, just as Jeff and Lisa are having their “dinner at 21.”)
Something that struck me this time was how the three voyeurs-- Jeff, Lisa, and the nurse–at first seem to consider the lives they’re watching through the windows as not really real. They discuss Mrs. Thorwald’s disappearance and possible death and dismemberment with a sort of detachment; it’s more as if they’re watching a movie themselves. As Lisa points out after Doyle shoots down their theories, she and Jeff are disappointed that a woman hasn’t been brutally murdered. Also, Thelma Ritter’s character seems to relish the grisly True-Crime details of the murder as long as it’s in theory, but when she has an opportunity to see (part of) the dead body, she wants nothing to do with it.