Rear Window
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: September 1, 1954 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
100
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Rear Window lovingly invests in suspense all through the film, banking it in our memory, so that when the final payoff arrives, the whole film has been the thriller equivalent of foreplay. Read full review
100
EmpireKim Newman
Flawless, essential viewing that would earn more than its five stars if only Empire would allow it. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The film leaps off the screen with a thrilling immediacy. Read full review
100
The New York TimesVincent Canby
As much as I admire all of these, especially "Vertigo," I can't imagine that any one of them will top the feelings of exhilaration that are prompted by Rear Window, this most bittersweet of Hitchcockian suspense-romances. Make no mistake about it: Rear Window is as much of a romance as it is a brilliant exercise in suspense. Read full review
100
VarietyWilliam Brogdon
Hitchcock confines all of the action to this single setting and draws the nerves to the snapping point in developing the thriller phases of the plot. He is just as skilled in making use of lighter touches in either dialog or situation to relieve the tension when it nears the unbearable. Interest never wavers during the 112 minutes of footage. Read full review
100
The GuardianKillian Fox
What's extraordinary, for a film that works on these different levels, is that it also manages to be a riveting thriller. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Simply put, Rear Window is a great film, perhaps one of the finest ever committed to celluloid. All of the elements are perfect (or nearly so), including the acting, script, camerawork, music (by Franz Waxman), and, of course, direction. The brilliance of the movie is that, in addition to keeping viewers on the edges of their seats, it involves us in the lives of all of the characters, from Jefferies and Lisa to Miss Torso. There isn't a moment of waste in 113 minutes of screen time. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
A superb example of suspense filmmaking, especially when one considers the technical limitations of its single set. Read full review
100
Total FilmStaff (Not Credited)
Everything from the masterly opening sequence to the ambiguous final shot indicates that this is the work of a prodigiously talented director. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
In its perfect fusion of popular entertainment and high art, Rear Window ranks among Hitchcock's best. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Masterpiece of voyeurism. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
The most densely allegorical of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces (1954), moving from psychology to morality to formal concerns and finally to the theological. It is also Hitchcock's most innovative film in terms of narrative technique, discarding a linear story line in favor of thematically related incidents, linked only by the powerful sense of real time created by the lighting effects and the revolutionary ambient sound track. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock's greatest movie. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
In the hands of a lesser talent, this might have become a self-conscious stunt, but in Hitchcock's it has the tightly wound perfection of a flawless sonnet or sonata. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Based on a Cornell Woolrich short story, this is one of Hitchcock's finest moments, full of subtle humor and nasty black turns, not to mention a wonderful score by Franz Waxman and gorgeous cinematography from longtime Hitchcock director of photography Robert Burks. Read full review
90
The New York TimesBosley Crowther
Mr. Stewart does a first-class job, playing the whole thing from a wheel chair and making points with his expressions and eyes. His handling of a lens-hound's paraphernalia in scanning the action across the way is very important to the color and fascination of the film. Read full review
90
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
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. Read full review
90
TimeStaff (Not Credited)
There is never an instant, in fact, when Director Hitchcock is not in minute and masterly control of his material: script, camera, cutting, props, the handsome set constructed from his ideas, the stars he has Hitched to his vehicle. Read full review
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