Hitchcock is widely considered the master of the thriller genre. For good reason. Psycho broke new ground when it was released in 1960. The Birds made people fear the skies much the way Jaws made people fear the water. Vertigo made people wonder how far the human psyche can be pushed. Yet I have always found Rear Window to be his best.
Hitchcock always understood the divide that the camera provides the audience. He uses it as a tool, almost to amuse himself as much as anything, to make the audience uncomfortable. In film, the viewer is essentially a voyeur privy to information regarding the lives of fictional characters but with no stake in it. When that barrier is broken down, i.e. a character looking into the camera, the viewer is now theoretically involved. To put it simply; imagine you are looking through binoculars at a crowded street corner when all of a sudden one of the bystanders looks directly at you. Boom, the barrier is broke, you become mortified.
Rear Window thrives on this concept and uses it very well. No movie has made me more uneasy when a character on screen stares directly into the camera(ok, Funny Games aside). Like all Hitchcock films, Rear Window is slightly dated to the point where it's comedic at times. That's part of the charm, though. If you ever feel like spying on someone, just remember what happened to good ol' Jimmy Stewart. It'll probably change your mind.
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