"Rear Window" is a story of a recuperating news photographer who believes he has witnessed a murder. Confined to a wheelchair after an accident, he spends his time watching the occupants of neighbouring apartments through a telephoto lens and binoculars and becomes convinced that a murder has taken place.

It is based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder" and was screened at the 1954 Venice Film Festival.

The film is considered by many filmgoers, critics, and scholars to be one of Hitchcock's best and one of the greatest films ever made. It received four Academy Award nominations and in 1997 was added to the United States National Film Registry in the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".