Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly might have just stumbled into the middle of a murder mystery in Hitchcock classic
REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday, August 3, free with museum admission, 1:00
Series continues Fridays at 1:00 through August 24
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
There’s a reason why Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window keeps popping up all over town, at such venues as BAM, the IFC Center, and now the Guggenheim Museum. One of the Master of Suspense’s best films, it’s an unforgettable voyeuristic thriller starring James Stewart as temporarily wheelchair-bound photojournalist L. B. Jeffries and Grace Kelly as his society-girl friend (and extremely well dressed) Lisa Carol Fremont. Bored out of his mind, Jeffries grabs a pair of binoculars and starts spying on the apartments across the courtyard from him, each one its own television show, including a musical comedy, a lonely romance, an exercise program, and, most ominously, perhaps a murder mystery. Ever the reporter, Jeffries decides to go after the possible killer, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), and he’ll risk his life — and Lisa’s — to find out the truth. Sensational from start to finish, Rear Window works on so many levels, you’ll discover something new every time you watch it. Rear Window is screening on August 3 at 1:00 as part of the Guggenheim series “Hollywood Films from the 1950s,” held in conjunction with the exhibit “Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949–1960.” The series continues August 10 with Nicholas Ray’s alienation classic Rebel Without a Cause, August 17 with Billy Wilder’s mad cross-dressing romp Some Like It Hot, and August 24 with Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s musical delight, Singin’ in the Rain.