I was waiting for a twist or some sort of reveal that would turn out to show that who he suspected of murder was actually just going through a divorce or something like that,
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Twist endings weren't all that "done" back then. Its possible that Psycho in 1960 is the movie that really started the twist ending thing. For one thing, audiences can get MAD at twist endings -- the whole story they thought there were following turns out to be a lie. They don't like being tricked. At least that's how it used to be. Nowadays it seems like twists are practically REQUIRED. And not just at the end.
I think the deal with Rear Window was to maintain a constant suspense about the possibility that Stewart was WRONG. His cop friend, Tom Doyle, certainly kept shooting down his theories, and Rear Window is about the possible embarrassment of making such a public commitment and BEING wrong. But Rear Window is also -- rather perversely I think-- about our DESIRE that Stewart be proved RIGHT. In other words, we've come to an Alfred Hitchcock movie, we want a murder! And as it turns out, we get one -- a particularly gruesome one for Hays Code 1954, even if we never see any of the killing or its aftermath(Mrs. Thorwald's body parts in the suitcase, her head in a hatbox.)
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and that the main character himself would go to jail because his nurse mentions him possibly getting caught for peeking in on people near the beginning of the movie.
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Hitchcock makes the point all through the film that Stewart's peeping isn't entirely healthy, is invasive, and rather creepy. Both Stella the nurse and Doyle the cop admonish Stewart about this, and even Thorwald throws some shame into him ("What do you want from me? Money? I have no money!") And its pretty clear that at least some of Stewart's peeping has a sexual angle(Miss Torson, the honeymoon couple, even Miss Lonelyhearts.)
Stewart isn't arrested at the end of Rear Window, but he IS punished. His OTHER leg is broken, and the original broken leg is RE-broken. I think Hitchcock wanted us to know that even if a killer was found out, Stewart wasn't entirely a great guy(his treatment of Grace Kelly is also not great.)
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I wasn't disappointed at all by the actual ending but I was suspecting something else so it was kind of a surprise in itself for him to have been right about the whole situation
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Well...that's kind of a "relief" payoff isn't it? And for Thorwald to SEE him, and come over and confront him...is a very mixed emotional scene. The bad guy is exposed, but he's pathetic.
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