This Summer We’re Channelling: Grace Kelly in “Rear Window”

One evening this summer, when a cool breeze was starting to push the heat from the earlier scorcher into more bearable a memory, we watched Rear Window in the garden. I have watched it on repeated times throughout the years, as with most of Hitchcock’s films, but each time on a tv screen, first on VHS, then on DVD, and, eventually and ever more reluctantly, on Blu-ray. The opportunity of watching it when it was screened at the festivals I have attended during all these years of cinephilia has somehow always escaped me. That evening, I finally experienced what it must feel like to watch a Hitchcock on a big screen, a timely and proper celebration for the up-coming Rear Window and Hitchcock anniversaries (70 years and 125 years, respectively). Grace Kelly was more beautiful, identifying with James Stewart was more powerful, Thelma Ritter’s dialogue was spicier than ever before. The actors felt closer yet grander than ever before. Colour was used for dramatic purposes rather than pictorial ends, I came to realise. When Jeff and Lisa and Tom Doyle are having a heated discussion exchanging suggestive glances, eyebrows raised, glasses of brandy stirred relentlessly in their hands, I sensed the tension more than the humour in it for the very first time. And when the killer attacks James Stewart, that moment of contact at the very end, I was involved in the sense of the violence in a way I hadn’t been before. Hitchcock should only be watched on a big screen.

“There’s more pure film there, even though it’s static, than in many films I’ve made,” Hitchcock told Ian Cameron and V.F. Perkins in an interview in 1963. Hitchcock makes sure to use purely cinematic means from the very first shot. François Truffaut made Hitchcock the perfect resume in their interviews: “You open up with the perspiring face of James Stewart, you move on to his leg in a cast, and then, on a nearby table, there is the broken camera, a stack of magazines, and, on the wall, there are pictures of racing cars as they topple over on the track. Throughout that single opening camera movement we have learned where we are, who the principal character is, all about his work, and even how it caused his accident.”

”It was a possibility of doing a purely cinematic film.
You have an immobilized man looking out. That’s one part of the film.
The second part shows what he sees and the third part shows how
he reacts. This is actually the purest expression of a cinematic idea.”

Alfred Hitchcock

The thriller is at the forefront of Rear Window, but the film is really a love story between L.B. Jeffries, Jeff (James Stewart), a photojournalist, whose profession and travels mean everything to him and who is reluctant to commit himself to a relationship, and his high-spirited girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), who wants to marry him. Jeff is confined to a wheelchair at home with a broken leg, and, from his window, he watches his neighbours from across the courtyard, peering into their windows. As Truffaut observed in his book, Hitchcock Truffaut, it was this technical challenge that had Hitchcock’s interest in making the film, based on a Cornell Woolrich short story, “a whole film from the viewpoint of one man, and embodied in a single large set”. Another one of Hitchcock’s genius touches is that each of the neighbours Jeff is watching reflects aspects of his own life and relationship with Lisa, but also an image of the world, mirroring, as Hitchcock told Truffaut, “every kind of human behavior”, “a small universe” (and “a display of human weaknesses and people in pursuit of happiness”, as the French filmmaker himself concurred).

Edith Head sketch for Grace Kelly’s costumes in “Rear Window”, 1954

”Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds,
just something that comes out of the mouths of people
whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.”

Alfred Hitchcock

In one of the most famous close-ups in film history, we are introduced to Lisa in a scene where a drowsy James Stewart awakes to a full close-up of Lisa coming towards him for a kiss. The neckline of the dress was kept very simple so that Grace’s face was framed by it for the close-up. When the camera pulled back, progressively revealing more of Lisa’s look as she turns on the light on all the lamps in the room, Hitchcock made sure that the public knew that Lisa was a woman who came from wealth. A dress “fresh from the Paris plane” is how Lisa describes it, with a fitted black bodice with an off the shoulder, deep “V” cut neckline and with cap sleeves, and a mid-calf full skirt, very New Look style, gathered and layered in chiffon tulle, with a spray bunch pattern on the hip area. A black patent leather belt, a white chiffon shoulder wrap, white elbow-length silk gloves, a single strand of pearls and black high heeled strapped sandals complete the look.

Edith Head, the costume designer, had previously worked with Grace and they had become good friends. Their relationship grew even closer when Hitchcock chose them both for Rear Window. Lisa works in the high fashion New York trade and her interest in clothes – so obviously put on a show here – is in high contrast to Jeff’s. “Lisa, it’s perfect – it’s always perfect,” he answers unenthusiastically when she asks what she thinks of her dress. Beauty, or this kind of beauty, emphasised through the most glamorous clothes, is of no importance to Jeff as long as their interests lie in opposite directions. Costume is used to establish identity – feminine perfection in this case – but it also quickly gives us the exact idea where the relationship between the two protagonists stands.
 

Edith Head sketch for Grace Kelly’s costumes in “Rear Window”, 1954

 
The simple black silk organza dress, with translucent cap sleeves, appears, darkly, at the pivotal point in the film, when Lisa starts to believe Jeff, and that the man they are watching is a murderer. Jeff, too, starts to see her with different eyes.
 

Edith Head sketch for Grace Kelly’s costumes in “Rear Window”, 1954

 
When Lisa arrives to spend the night at Jeff’s, she is wearing the famous eau de nil suit: a midi-length jacket with stand-up collar and rounded shoulders, a style reminiscent of the designs of Cristóbal Balenciaga. Underneath, she wears a white silk halterneck, beautifully gathered at the waist (see above) with a wrapover front that sits atop a ’50s style midi skirt, but in a tubular cut this time, nipped in at the waist. The ensemble is further accessorised with a white pillbox hat with half veil, a single strand of pearls, stud earrings with glass cameo, and a multi-stringed pearl bracelet with hanging gold ornate lockets. The bracelet is by far the most spectacular piece of costume Lisa is wearing, reestablishing her image as the personification of idealised femininity reflected in the way she dresses.
 

 
From inside her Mark Cross overnight case, Lisa produces a nightgown which she calls “a preview of coming attractions.” The dialogue is incredibly witty and entertaining in Rear Window, as it usually is in Hitchcock’s movies.

“I wish I was more creative,” Lisa tells Jeff. “But, sweetheart, you are. You have a great talent for creating difficult situations,” he says, referring to her decision of spending the night over, “I do?,” Lisa answers, smiling satisfyingly.
 

 
Grace wears a print dress towards the end of the film. Edith was more liberal in her designs in the 1930s, as David Chierichetti, film historian and costumer, remarked. In the 50s and 60s, she simply didn’t use prints, because she was worried that the picture could be delayed and the prints would look dated. “She uses a print dress here, because it serves a certain dramatic purpose.” It’s a beautiful, very feminine dress, and Lisa has high heels on. “This look makes her more vulnerable, more natural, more foolhearty.” I think it is when Jeff realises how much he loves Lisa.
 

 
The casual outfit Lisa wears at the end of the movie was Hitchcock’s way to suggest she could be the sporty type, Jeff’s type, after all. Edith dressed Grace in slim indigo jeans and a pink casual men’s shirt with button-down collar and rolled-up sleeves, and dark brown loafers.

Grace Kelly’s costumes in Rear Window are the perfect example of the stylish and elegant fifties. But, most importantly, they are an essential part of building-up character and just by watching Lisa’s changing outfits and wealth of details of her clothes, you become aware of the layers of the story and of the character.
 

Photos: movie stills, Classiq Journal. Credit: Paramount Pictures

Editorial sources: “Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer”, by Jay Jorgensen; “Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films”, by Paul Duncan; “Alfred Hitchcock Interviews”, edited by Sidney Gottlieb