Lisa (Rear Window)

FEAR: NOT BEING “COOL GIRL”

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window tells the tale of a wheelchair-ridden James Stewart investigating what he believes is a murder in the apartment across the courtyard of his New York City complex, all while sitting incapacitated in his own apartment the entire time. Side-characters include his nurse, a detective friend, and his girlfriend, Lisa Freemont, played by the famous Grace Kelly.

Lisa Freemont is a jet-setting NYC socialite who dresses in the finest clothes, and rubs elbows with the fashion elite of the city. She is refined, successful, beautiful, and she wants to marry James Stewart’s L.B. Jefferies. He does not fully reciprocate her affections, however.

While Jefferies is alright with Lisa being his girlfriend, he does not want to get serious with her because-get this-she’s TOO perfect.

He wants a girl who can keep up with his career, that being a photographer who is frequently sent to dangerous, far-off places.(It is in one such location that he received the injury that keeps him in his wheelchair the entire film). He is afraid that Lisa is too used to a glamorous and frivolous lifestyle to be able to be his partner long-term.

While the leading lady does find herself in grave danger and certain death at a point in the film, the biggest threat to her comes in the form of the man she loves not being able to love her for who she truly is.

She puts up a fight when confronted with the predicament, and very stubbornly insists that despite being a city girl, she’d be able to hold up in dangerous conditions, an argument that Jefferies refuses to entertain.

To spoil the plot a bit, in the last 30 minutes of the film Lisa attempts and succeeds to impress Jefferies through the brave deed of breaking into the suspected murderer’s apartment to retrieve a very important clue.

She is caught in the act, and nearly killed right in front of her boyfriend, but is rescued by the police who had been present for an unrelated issue.

While Lisa does ultimately win a tiny bit more respect from the man she wants to impress, the fact that she had to nearly die in the process is a bit of a red flag.

In the last scene of the film, after the murder has been solved, Jefferies is seen asleep in his wheelchair, while Lisa sits at the window reading a thick, boring-looking book about the Himalayas.

After noticing that he’s asleep, however, Lisa puts the book down and picks up an issue of Harper’s Bazaar, looking much more content.