The location and angle of the shadows of the "sun" are in the same place in the morning and at night.
When Jeff grabs the box of flashbulbs, all four can be seen in the box, but when he backs up more, there are only two left.
When Thorwald returns home from one of his trips out in the rain lugging his suitcase, the camera (from Jeff's point of view) pans from a glimpse of Thorwald in the street, across Miss Torso's apartment where she is preparing to go to bed, to the second floor hallway where Thorwald is walking toward his apartment. This observed action takes only a few seconds - an impossibly short time frame for Thorwald to have entered his building through its front door, walked over to the stairwell, climbed the stairs to the second floor and then be seen walking along the second floor hallway.
Lisa takes the binoculars away from Jeff and wraps the neck cord around them before putting them on a small cupboard. When Jeff picks up the binoculars later, the neck cord is no longer wrapped around them.
When Jeff is getting back into the wheelchair after Stella has given him a massage, his pajama top jumps from being unbuttoned to buttoned between shots.
The Exakta camera used in this movie is usually held in a way that would suggest that the shutter is triggered on the right-side upward surface, as is normal for most cameras. 35mm Exakta cameras actually have the shutter release on the front of the camera, just left of the lens.
It's possible the annual phone directory was published/issued during the first few months of Thorwald's lease.
At about 1 hr 13 minutes Jeff wheels himself over to the window and bumps his broken leg against the wall below the window, yet he doesn't grimace at all. A broken leg in a cast for seven weeks (and just a week from coming off) is scarcely more sensitive to such bumps than an uninjured leg.
Judith Evelyn's Miss Lonelyhearts lays out a handful of pills on a nightstand. The pills should be the size of ants given how far Jefferies from Miss Lonelyheart's apartment.
Viewer can see that the red pills are the size of Horse Tranquilizers. Typical human would have a hard time swallowing just one pill.
However, not only is it a fictional drug that could really have any size, some real life pills are indeed surprisingly large. This is where the joke about a pill being a "horse pill" came from to begin with.
Viewer can see that the red pills are the size of Horse Tranquilizers. Typical human would have a hard time swallowing just one pill.
However, not only is it a fictional drug that could really have any size, some real life pills are indeed surprisingly large. This is where the joke about a pill being a "horse pill" came from to begin with.
Stella is wearing the same dress on her fourth visit as she was on her second visit, which occurred on different days.
However, this is not out of the ordinary. Many working women have a limited wardrobe causing them to repeat the same outfit every few days .
As Lisa (played by Grace Kelly) is in the kitchen preparing the brandy for Lt. Thomas Doyle and Jeff, her silhouette can be seen on the ceiling. The silhouette is of Grace Kelly with her hair down, though moments later when she emerges with the warmed brandy, her hair is swept up in a French Twist.
At around 1:43 in the movie, after Lisa has been taken away by the police and Stella leaves to bail her out, Jeff is alone in the apartment, and he calls Doyle. Jeff whispers during the phone conversation but there is no reasonable explanation why.
Throughout the film Stewart whispers constantly when there is no need to, on the phone, to people in the room. Thorwald's apartment is a good distant away, and there is always loud music playing it would be impossible for Thorwald to hear normal conversation. It is only done for dramatic effect.
When Jefferies is talking to Doyle on the phone after the police come to Thorwald's apartment and arrest Lisa, Jefferies gives Doyle a thorough rundown of what happened in the apartment but he fails to tell Doyle that Thorwald saw him and is on his way to Jefferies's apartment to harm or kill him.
When Lisa is climbing the fire escape ladder to enter Thorwald's apartment, and Jefferies expresses extreme agitation over this, he could have set off a flashbulb as the signal that Thorwald was returning (even though he wasn't at that point) to get her to stop. Sending even a false signal would have relieved his anxiety over her safety, but he did nothing.
The helicopter seen near the start of the film is obviously composited, as there is obvious camera shake in the copter footage.
When the audience is allowed to look through James Stewart's camera with the telephoto lens, the screen image is masked as round. However, the actual image seen through the SLR viewfinder would be rectangular.
Traffic on 9th Street is one way, westbound; a truck is shown going eastbound (the wrong way) down the street.
At 49:19, as the camera pushes in for a closeup of Lisa (her suspicions suddenly aroused), if the viewer listens closely, the creak of the camera as it dollies toward her can be heard.
When the dog is taken from the basket after being killed, it is apparent that it is a kid's stuffed dog by the way the guy is holding it. If it was really dead, his legs and head would be hanging down.
When Miss Lonelyhearts and the songwriter are talking about his record in his apartment, the dubbed-in dialogue doesn't sync with the picture, even to the extent of Miss Lonelyhearts being heard to say "I can't tell you what this music has meant to me," while her mouth isn't moving.
At around 52 minutes: When Jeff's nurse goes to the door saying she's going to find out the name of the freight carrier that is taking off with the trunk, someone who sounds nothing like James Stewart has dubbed him with the peculiar sounding line "I'll keep an eye on the alley". Jimmy Stewart is holding the binoculars over his mouth but he's not moving his lips. Prior to that, when he says, "don't do anything foolish", his lips are still moving after the audio is heard.
At around 1 hr 32 min: While Lisa and Stella are digging up the flowers, the pianist is shown playing with other musicians. When the harmonica players starts to play, a saxophone is heard although none is visible. The harmonica is subsequently heard also.
After Lisa sees Thorwald tie up the trunk and the camera dollies forward to a close up, there are creaks from the floorboards and footsteps heard from the camera crew.
(at around 1 hr 11 mins) When Tom Doyle is on the phone to a colleague and before Lisa comes out of the kitchen, the shadow of a camera crew member is visible on wall by the kitchen window.
There is an obviously accomplished staffer of the world famous 21 restaurant who brings the couple their dinner and wine, and Lisa is purportedly top tier society, and yet they're chilling red wine.
Jeff, a professional photo-journalist, doesn't bother to take any photos of the developing mystery in his own back yard. He merely uses the camera with telephoto lens as a makeshift telescope. The only photos he seems to have taken were of the (at that time completely uninteresting) flower bed a couple of weeks earlier.
(at around 1h 18 mins) When Lisa and Jeff are discussing "rear window ethics", Grace Kelly noticeably stumbles her line "Jeff, you know if someone came in here they wouldn't believe what they'd s...see"
When Stella tells Jeff that Thorwald's blinds are "up now", Jeff spins around and moves back with Stella into the shadowed part of his apartment telling her to "Get back. He'll see you". But immediately afterwords, while Thorwald is looking out of his window, Jeff moves back into the bright sunlight.
Lisa clearly pronounces her first name as "Lee-sah", but her longtime boyfriend L.B. always pronounces it as "Lee-zah" - with a "Z" sound, rather than with an "S" sound.
When Jeff phones Tom Doyle's home to tell him about Thorwald, he addresses Tom's wife as "Mrs. Doyle", as if he'd never even met her before. Seconds later, Jeff addresses her as "Tess" with familiarity, as if he's well-acquainted with her. Moments later, with even greater familiarity, Jeff teases her that "Thorwald's a man", and Tess laughs him off as though they were longtime close friends.