"Rear Window" was one of Hitchcock's favourite films, as it was—and still is—to audiences and critics alike ever since its original release in 1954. To the director, it represented a rare opportunity to have a whole film seen from the viewpoint of one character and embodied in a single set.

As for the audience, it placed them explicitly in the role of voyeurs, a guilty pleasure which involves them in a nerve racking climax. A photojournalist immobilised by a broken leg, passes the time watching his neighbours through the rear window of his apartment.

Behind the many windows the photographer observes with growing interest a variety of domestic vignettes a tableau of big city life. He becomes fascinated by one particular apartment when it dawns on him that the man across the way has probably murdered his wife.

The journalist now has trouble convincing his fiancee and the other residents of the building of this suspicion, although immobilised, he must try to apprehend the murderer.