To help pass the time I could spy out the front window through Uncle Kevin’s binoculars, the way the man with the broken leg did in Rear Window.

     I have no idea when I first saw this film but I do recall that for many years I thought it was in black-and-white so it must have been on television. I thought it boring, a tedious story of a man spying on his very uninteresting neighbours and a murder that only might have happened. Years later I saw it again as a double feature at the drive-in (and its a fair bet that the other half of the bill was the movie on the next page) and I was awed, thrilled, thought it utterly brilliant. I even noticed the wonderful Grace Kelly this time, not to mention the superb Thelma Ritter. It's impossible to comprehend how I got it so wrong first time. Maybe the colour made all the difference.

Jeff: He killed a dog last night because the dog was scratching around in the garden. You know why? Because he had something buried in that garden that the dog scented.
 Doyle: Like an old hambone?
 Jeff: I don’t know what pet names Thorwald had for his wife.

 Stella: Let’s go down there and find out what’s buried in that garden.
 Lisa: Why not? I’ve always wanted to meet Mrs. Thorwald.

  Lisa: Jeff, you know if someone came in here, they wouldn’t believe what they’d see? You and me with long faces plunged into despair because we find out a man didn’t kill his wife. We’re two of the most frightening ghouls I’ve ever known.

    The man spying on his neighbours who thinks he has witnessed a murder was played by James Stewart, and the sense of being trapped as much by doubt as by knowledge was what made Hitchcock so famous. The wit flies as Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter try to help him out, but in the end he is helpless as the killer closes in. This is the sort of movie they mean when they say they don’t make them like that anymore.