The screening on March 23rd will be introduced by Dr. Harvey O’Brien, Lecturer in Film Studies at UCD.

This retrospective culminates in five much-studied films by the mature Hitchcock that scarcely need introduction; less familiar is the name of his one consistent Hollywood writer, John Michael Hayes, here at the start of a four-film collaboration that ended with the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much. 

Rear Window is at once an exciting detective thriller, a study of sexual tensions, and an artful exercise in meta-cinema: the wheelchair from which James Stewart, his leg in plaster, observes his neighbours through the window stands in equally for the chair both of the director making the film and of the spectator watching it.

Mixing silent narrative with Hayes’ witty dialogue, and moving from initial Rope-style long takes into scenes created purely by editing, it stands as Hitchcock’s proudest and most purposeful demonstration of his concept of ‘pure cinema’.

This event is part of The Genius of Alfred Hitchcock: Part Four, the final part of our complete retrospective of Hitchcock’s 52 surviving films (March 2nd – 31st).