Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly might have just stumbled into the middle of a murder mystery in Hitchcock classic
CABARET CINEMA: REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, December 7, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.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 the Guggenheim Museum: Watching it makes people happy. 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 December 7, introduced by Russian-American documentary and fine art photographer Lena Herzog, as part of the Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “Happiness is . . .,” held in conjunction with the larger Rubin Museum program “Happy Talk.” The series continues December 14 with the cheerful George Cukor classic Camille and December 21 with Gene Kelly having a blast in Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris before concluding December 28 with Roman Polanski’s not-quite-romantic-comedy Chinatown.