Rear Window is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder".

Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film stars James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr.

Jeff is regularly visited by Stella, a cynical, middle-aged nurse, and his idealistic young girlfriend Lisa Fremont, a model and socialite.

During an intense heat wave, Jeff watches his neighbors through their open windows, including a professional dancer, coined "Miss Torso", a songwriter with writer's block, and notably a large traveling salesman of wholesale costume jewelry, Lars Thorwald, hen-pecked by his bedridden wife.

Now convinced his theory is true, Jeff has Lisa pull out some slides taken two weeks earlier and notices that Thorwald had dug up his garden in the interim, possibly to bury his wife's body.

Below Thorwald's apartment, Jeff and Stella are distracted watching a lower ground floor neighbor – coined "Miss Lonely-Hearts" – contemplating an overdose, and they call the police.

Additionally, she sees the "male gaze" as especially evident in Rear Window in characters such as the dancer "Miss Torso;" she is both a spectacle for Jeff to enjoy, as well as for the audience (through his substitution).

[12] In his book Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window", John Belton further addresses the underlying issues of voyeurism which he asserts are evident in the film.

"[13] In an explicit example of a condemnation of voyeurism, Stella expresses her outrage at Jeffries' voyeuristic habits, saying, "In the old days, they'd put your eyes out with a red hot poker" and "What people ought to do is get outside and look in for a change."

Also heard on the soundtrack are versions of songs popularized earlier in the decade by Nat King Cole ("Mona Lisa", 1950) and Dean Martin ("That's Amore", 1952), along with segments from Leonard Bernstein's score for Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy Free (1944), Richard Rodgers's song "Lover" (1932), and "M'appari tutt'amor" from Friedrich von Flotow's opera Martha (1844), most borrowed from Paramount's music publisher, Famous Music.

Although veteran Hollywood composer Franz Waxman is credited with the score for the film, his contributions were limited to the opening and closing titles and the piano tune ("Lisa").

What it has to say about people and human nature is superficial and glib, but it does expose many facets of the loneliness of city life, and it tacitly demonstrates the impulse of morbid curiosity.

"[19] Variety called the film "one of Alfred Hitchcock's better thrillers" which "combines technical and artistic skills in a manner that makes this an unusually good piece of murder mystery entertainment.

The reviewer also noted the "occasional studied lapses of taste and, more important, the eerie sense a Hitchcock audience has of reacting in a manner so carefully foreseen as to seem practically foreordained.

They further added, "What helps to make the story highly entertaining is the fact that it is enhanced by clever dialogue and by delightful touches of comedy and romance that relieve the tension.

"[25] Nearly 30 years after the film's initial release, Roger Ebert reviewed the re-release by Universal Pictures in October 1983, after Hitchcock's estate was settled.

[28] In his 2012 review of the film, Killian Fox of The Guardian wrote: "Hitchcock made a career out of indulging our voyeuristic tendencies, and he never excited them more skilfully, or with more gleeful self-awareness, than in Rear Window".

[29] In 1997, Rear Window was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[35] Rear Window was restored by the team of Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz for its 1999 limited theatrical re-release (using Technicolor dye-transfer prints for the first time in this title's history) and the Collector's Edition DVD release in 2000.

[40] Rear Window was remade as a TV movie of the same name in 1998, with an updated storyline in which the lead character is paralyzed and lives in a high-tech home filled with assistive technology.

Rear Window has directly influenced plot elements and themes of numerous Brian De Palma films, particularly Hi, Mom!

[41][42][43] Disturbia (2007) is a modern-day retelling, with the protagonist (Shia LaBeouf) under house arrest instead of laid up with a broken leg, and who believes that his neighbor is a serial killer rather than having committed a single murder.

In February 2008, the film was referenced as a part of Variety's The 2008 Hollywood Portfolio: Hitchcock Classics spread, with Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem as Lisa and Jeff, respectively.

[49] On September 25, 2012, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released Rear Window for the first time on Blu-ray as part of the "Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection".