smoothrunner

It's incredibly challenging to write a review of this film - so many ideas and layers of cinematic storytelling are embedded within it, and so many dissertations and essays have been written about it, that the very notion of capturing it all in a single review feels excessively grandiose and overwhelming. Rear Window is such a comprehensive film in terms of cinematic language and richness of detail that any review will inevitably be incomplete and oversimplified.

Let's start with the stars, each of whom is an extraordinary personality, not just in terms of their craft. Brigadier General James Stewart, part of a trio of friends (and a love triangle) with Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullan, served as a combat pilot during World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. The peak of his pre-war career was thanks to his collaboration with Frank Capra, who also convinced a disillusioned Stewart to return to Hollywood after the war, casting him in the timeless It's a Wonderful Life. Stewart later starred in several Alfred Hitchcock films, including Rear Window, where he plays Jeff, a photojournalist confined to his apartment with a broken leg, sweltering in the heat and boredom. Princess Grace Patricia Kelly of Monaco, the epitome of elegance and an ideal of beauty, a natural blonde with a face as if carved from marble, was Hitchcock's favorite actress, earning an Oscar and two Golden Globes in her short film career. In Rear Window, Kelly plays Jeff's lover, Lisa, a model and socialite who wants to marry him. Thelma Ritter, a housewife who began acting at 42, earned six Oscar nominations, four of them consecutively. Ritter plays Jeff's nurse, Stella, a sharp-tongued, cynical woman who engages in brilliant, biting banter with Jeff. And, of course, the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, who turned Rear Window into a recursive exploration of voyeurism, blending reality and illusion while raising questions about how much the observed reality is merely a product of the observer's imagination.

The film begins with the raising of the curtain - the opening of the window shades in Jeff's apartment, a perspective that becomes both Jeff's and the viewer's throughout the film. The soundscape consists solely of conversations, street noises, and occasional music played by a neighboring composer on his piano or a record player. The viewer is fully immersed, becoming Jeff, spying on the neighbors alongside him while also observing Jeff himself. What does Jeff, confined to a wheelchair by his cast, see? Swelteringly bored, he watches his neighbors, each becoming a character in a silent film narrated by Jeff. The audience doesn't hear the neighbors - they see them through Jeff's eyes and form impressions based on his commentary. Stella accuses Jeff of voyeurism for watching his neighbors. But isn't the viewer doing the same, observing both the neighbors and Jeff? Moreover, how reliable is Jeff as a narrator of what he sees? Is everything on screen a fiction conjured by Jeff's imagination, or perhaps a dream? Just as the film itself is a fiction crafted by Hitchcock's imagination. And how accessible is reality to our perception before it becomes part of our imagination?

The thing is, Jeff isn't eager to abandon his bachelor habits and marry Lisa, despite her captivating beauty and charm. Yes, Lisa is as alluring as Miss Torso, a dancer whose lingerie-clad exercises Jeff spies on. With Lisa, one could indulge in the passions of the newlyweds behind another, heavily curtained window. It's tempting to dedicate a song like "Lisa," composed by the neighbor across the way, to her. But there's another side to marriage - another movie, or rather, another neighbor's apartment, tells a different story. There, Lars Thorwald, a traveling salesman once as free as Jeff, endures his wife's torment, as she lounges in bed all day in a negligee suspiciously similar to the one Lisa will soon wear while parading before Jeff. Yet abandoning Lisa feels inhumane - on the ground floor lives the Miss Lonelyhearts, imagining companionship and, in one scene, wearing a green dress the same shade as Lisa's. Central to these competing narratives is the story of Lars Thorwald and his wife. Jeff suspects Thorwald, fed up with her endless taunts, has murdered her - much like Jeff might wish to be rid of Lisa, whose talent, he claims, is creating trouble. Jeff's detective friend dismisses his suspicions, insisting it's just his imagination. Masterfully manipulating angles, Hitchcock shifts the camera's perspective to the detective's point of view, making him the primary narrator and disorienting the viewer.

The film's intrigue seems to hinge on whether Lars Thorwald killed his wife. But perhaps it's really about whether Jeff will marry Lisa? Everything happening across the courtyard strikingly mirrors what's happening in Jeff's apartment - or rather, in his mind. What he observes through the rear window, or in his imagination, becomes more real than what's in his room. Who in their right mind would watch Miss Torso or Miss Lonelyhearts when the stunning Grace Kelly is in the room? Yet Lisa, even in a negligee, must close all the curtains to become Jeff's focus. She jokingly says she'd only distract him from Miss Torso by moving across the courtyard and performing an hourly striptease. Indeed, Lisa truly captures Jeff's attention and becomes part of his reality only when she becomes part of his fantasy - leaving the apartment and entering Thorwald's, transforming into the daring heroine of the thriller Jeff and the audience are watching. Only then does she earn the ring on her finger, won through bravery and adventure.

Layer upon layer, the stories of the neighbors, Jeff, Lisa, and Hitchcock - watching the audience from the screen, breaking the fourth wall as the audience watches his imagination brought to life - interweave and overlap. Was there a murder? How much of Jeff's narrative about what's on screen reflects reality? Are we watching a murder investigation or Jeff's nightmare about marrying Lisa? How real is reality to us until it becomes part of our imagination? Studies from the early 1950s in the U. S. showed most Americans dreamed in black and white, but by the 1960s, most dreamed in color. This shift coincided with cinema transitioning from predominantly black-and-white to color. If dreams reflect our unconscious, how much does cinema's influence on dreams distort our unconscious, and how much does the latter reflect our direct experience rather than what we've seen on screens? Would Jeff have seen the real Lisa if he hadn't viewed her through his camera lens as the heroine of his thriller fantasy? C. S. Lewis wrote that imaginary beings have their insides on the outside - they are visible souls - and that a man can only be truly seen by placing him in the imagination and viewing him as a fairy-tale character.

Hitchcock's undeniable mastery lies in the fact that most viewers won't notice these narrative layers, or even Hitchcock himself, fixing a clock in the composer's apartment. Some will be gripped by his signature suspense, following Lisa's daring adventures, feeling helpless during the dark apartment confrontation, or jolted by Thorwald's piercing, fourth-wall-breaking stare. Others will be captivated by the detective intrigue, the sparkling dialogue between Jeff, Stella, and Lisa, the romantic storyline, or enchanted by Grace Kelly's aristocratic elegance, as if at a fashion show, debuting a stunning new outfit with each appearance. When the curtain of the shades falls, ending the audience's voyeurism, viewers will surely leave satisfied, each in their own way.

I am, to put it mildly, indifferent to figure skating, and I certainly don't find stories with little girls as the main characters fascinating. It is all the more surprising that I watched "Medalist" - a story about a little girl who is engaged in figure skating - with pleasure.

For the main character, Inori, it all apparently began when her older sister took up figure skating. But formally, Inori was amazed by the performance of the young star of Japanese figure skating Hikaru, which she saw on TV. Inori, like any child, learns by imitation. So she wanted to learn figure skating, which her sister was fond of and which is so popular that its stars are shown on television. To learn and surpass! After all, in other respects the girl considered herself untalented and clumsy. The matter was complicated by the fact that the girl's mother, after the injury of her older daughter, which forced her to leave figure skating, was afraid that the same would happen to the younger one. That's why she didn't give the girl money to take up her expensive hobby. Her mother's neurotic overprotection nearly cost Inori her athletic career and self-confidence. However, Inori showed a special talent - persistence and even impudence, which allowed her to "bribe" the rink guard with worms for fishing and to train there herself for free.

The second main character of the anime, Tsukasa, caught her illegally using the rink. The guy had a difficult life in figure skating. He started doing it very late - already as a young man, having accidentally found himself benevolent sponsors, he was not confident in himself and did not achieve any particular heights in his sport. Therefore, after the death of the sponsor, he increasingly got by with odd jobs as a laborer. Fortunately, his former ice dancing partner, Hitomi, offered him a temporary position as an assistant coach at the very rink where he found Inori on his first day. He was hooked by the determination of the girl, who also came to figure skating quite late, and he decided to help her.

The plot of the story is quite intriguing and masterful - the viewer seems to come "to the rink" at the same time as these two underdogs, the girl and her coach. The viewer begins to grow "from scratch" with the two main characters, gradually getting drawn into the world of figure skating with its problems, rivalries and achievements. Both main characters demonstrate both professional and personal development in the course of the narrative. The dramaturgy of the story, although not without melodramatic exaggerations, is excellently constructed, involving the viewer and leading to the catharsis of "overcoming and achieving". The psychology of the jealous mothers who bring their children to figure scating is subtly noted, as well as the children themselves, both those who are involved only because their mother tells them to, and those who follow family traditions or are passionately interested in sports, like the main character. The work of a coach is interestingly revealed, often involving attention to detail, the need to overcome the desire to "clone and fulfill oneself" through young athletes and, instead, find a suitable, individual "key" to a trainee, depending on his character and motivation. Tsukasa's thoughts on giving Inori agency in making key decisions about the direction of her training in order to develop responsibility, independence, and individuality are also important as a life lesson. Therefore, the mangaka can only be given a big plus for the story and characters, as well as the animators who transferred everything to the screen. The quality of the narration is excellent. The animation of individual performances, especially Hikaru's performance, is simply outstanding.

Without any exaggeration, I can say that "Medalist" is an excellent spokon. One of the best in recent times.

The film's main character, Taeko, played brilliantly by Kogure Michio, is at odds with her husband, her life, her friends, and, most of all, herself. In the absence of children, her husband, whose silence and patience Taeko takes for stupidity, serves as an excellent target for Taeko to vent her dissatisfaction with herself and her life on him. She lies to her husband, mocks him with her girlfriends, calls him a blockhead, considers him an uncultured country bumpkin. She needs resorts, theaters, first-class travel, social life. Life with her husband seems boring to her, devoid of spice - that, apparently, chic and romance that she, the daughter of a wealthy family, apparently imagined when she entered into marriage.

Her husband, Shin, the head of the machinery department of a big corporation, is an extremely level-headed and calm man, unlike his bored wife who strives for unnecessary drama, he seeks peace and quiet in the family, and therefore tries to avoid conflicts with Taeko, does not want to argue with her and pretends to believe her lies. Only once does he give himself away, taking the side of his niece, whom Taeko is trying to persuade into an arranged marriage, saying that if his wife forces her niece to marry against her will, her marriage will be as unhappy as their own. He, like his friends, sees beauty in simple, seemingly trivial things - in the blue sky, the Southern Cross constellation over the Strait of Malacca, cheap cigarettes, simple and tasty food, traveling by train in third class.

Excellent work by Ozu. At first glance, it is as banal and inconspicuous as the notorious rice with green tea, but it requires, like any truism, wisdom to understand and, like any simple thing, unspoiled taste to enjoy. It is about the fact that happiness in marriage does not consist in luxury, originality or intense relationships, but in peaceful and quiet joy in simple, but familiar and reliable things together with a loved one. However, happiness can only be achieved if the spouses have achieved peace with themselves. The film was shot with the same simplicity and elegance that marital love consists of - drawn-out, static shots and unhurried narration. At the same time, the film does not seem drawn out at all, without losing its fascination throughout the entire film narrative and entertaining the viewer with gentle humor and psychological observations.