REAR WINDOW tonight at the Riverview

Rear Window (1954) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Monday, April 20 at 7:30pm @ The Riverview Theater

North By Northwest sold out last week at The Heights way before the doors even opened. (If anyone is missing the secret message, it is that people in the Twin Cities like rep cinema.) Take-Up Production's Hitchcock series continues tonight at the Riverview with Rear Window. Chances are the Riverview won't sell out, but I wouldn't be late just in case. Don't even admit that you've never seen this film before and just go, that way your life of shame will be over.

"Of all Hitchcock's films, this is the one which most reveals the man. As usual it evolves from one brilliantly plain idea: Stewart, immobilised in his apartment by a broken leg and aided by his girlfriend (Grace Kelly at her most Vogue-coverish), takes to watching the inhabitants across the courtyard, first with binoculars, later with his camera. He thinks he witnesses a murder... There is suspense enough, of course, but the important thing is the way that it is filmed: the camera never strays from inside Stewart's apartment, and every shot is closely aligned with his point of view. And what this relentless monomaniac witnesses is everyone's dirty linen: suicide, broken dreams, and cheap death. Quite aside from the violation of intimacy, which is shocking enough, Hitchcock has nowhere else come so close to pure misanthropy, nor given us so disturbing a definition of what it is to watch the 'silent film' of other people's lives, whether across a courtyard or up on a screen. No wonder the sensual puritan in him punishes Stewart by breaking his other leg." (Time Out)