Rear Window

Alfred Hitchcock's Incredibly influential Psychological Thriller could be said to be a staple of the genre.
It uses the ordinary everyday setting of an apartment to great effect in creating an atmosphere of incredibly powerful paranoia that will raise many questions to the veiwer.

For example the main protagonist seems to become more unbalanced as the films goes on giving a great red herring typical of Hitchcock's style that leaves you questioning wether isolation has merely let the character's sanity unravel or wether something more sinister is actually going on.

The set though very everyday in appearance is actually a marvel when you realise the amount of timing required to pull off seamless scene changes without using cuts. also the level of visibilty between areas of the setting make it an incredible technical feat as it is possible to see glimpses of interactions between the supporting cast in a beleivable way that still means you get a good idea of what is going on. Making it both beleivable and coherent.

The majority of the story arc centers around a crime commited in the area of a housing blockwith views into the everyday lives of the tennants, this style has been emulated by such works as Silent Hill 4; The Room which shares the plot device of a man trapped inside his apartment whose link to the outside world becomes a level of voyeurism. As with most work by Hitchcock he gets incredible performances out of his cast as considering the era they play their roles in a convincingly human manner. The interaction between characters is a great strength of the piece as is the use of camera angles as most action within the block is shot from the main protagonist's perspective giving the removed isolated feel to the viewer that he is feeling throughout..
This is particularly effective during scenes of suspense such as when the character of Lisa goes to investigate the flat of the man suspected of murder. The camera gives a true sense of helplessness in this very well timed and choreographed scene.

An interesting idea brought forward by the film seems to be that of two worlds interacting and crossing over. This is given in the sense that the apartment bound Jeffries inhabits one plain of existance as a man shut in a box and unable to leave and the vibrant world of the apartments below. It could be argued that the jeffries character yearns for the interaction they share that he is lacking and becomes obsessed with it to the point of this second world violating his world the way he has violated it with his obsessive voyuerism.
An interesting dynamic is the character of Lisa who is able to traverse both these plains and act as a go between which seems to spur jeffries obsession on.

Another interesting quality to the film is the multi-layered approach to story telling. This is evidenced by the lives of all the people in the neighborhood being played out before the main cast which leaves the film with several interlacing and complex storylines.

I feel that this film is important to the genre as it raises many questions about voyeurism and obsession that outside of the particular genre might not have been so clearly or neatly constructed and as such it attaches the audience to the protagonists in a profoundly intimate way. For example Jeffries' slip into voyueristic obsession is not only his journey but the audience's as well.