People like him were always getting a deserved comeuppance in "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Twilight Zone."
--
That's true! They were presented as busybodies, or misogynists or misanthropes and they got a comeuppance.
Stewart gets a comeuppance at the end of Rear Window. He RE-breaks the one leg, and NEWLY breaks the other leg. Think of the pain. Think of the itching. And a man with two broken legs(one broke twice) using 1954 surgeries will probably have crippling problems for the rest of his life. At minimum a limp, maybe a loss of walking entirely, eventually.
Its quite a punishment, really, and Hitchcock sets it up by having everybody chastise Jeff for his snoopiness and...voyeurism. We accept the two broken legs as punishment accordingly.
Jeff's a hero, too, of course -- he solves a brutal murder and brings the killer to justice at risk to his own life and limb. Hitchcock delighted in letting his villains be nice and his heroes be bad.
I've always felt Jeff's worst, most cowardly moment is when he whimpers in impotent cowardess as Thorwald catches and throttles Lisa across the way. He doesn't yell out to his neighbors, he chews on his hand and says "Stella, what do we DO?" Its as if Jeff would rather that Lisa die than that his voyeurism be exposed to the apartment dwellers. Disgusting.
And perhaps only James Stewart would have been willing to play that role back then..
reply
share