According to Hitchcock’s associate producer, Herbert Coleman, ‘it was the most beautiful shot of a woman I have ever seen in my life.’ It is one of the most entrancing entrances of any screen character- a moment when, in a reversal of convention, a sleeping hero is awakened by a kiss from a Fairy Princess.
In Rear Window (1954), a professional photographer, L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), in a wheelchair with a broken leg after an accident at one of his assignments, is asleep in his apartment. Suddenly a sinister shadow falls across his face, which puts us slightly on our guard. Hitchcock cuts to a shot of a stunningly beautiful blonde coming into seductive close-up.
He then cuts to a close profile shot almost in slow-motion to accentuate the dreaminess of the atmosphere as hero and heroine kiss. ‘Who are you?’ asks Jefferies, jokingly. Taking up the playful tone, the heroine introduces herself- ‘Lisa Carol Fremont’-, on every name switching on a lamp as if to emphasise the warmth and light she has brought into the room.
Delighted with her contribution to Dial M for Murder (1953), Hitchcock was keen to work with Grace Kelly again, a feeling that was mutual: she turned down the offer of a role in On the Waterfront (1954)- which was to win Eva Marie-Saint an Oscar- to make Rear Window instead. This time Hitchcock was keen to create a part that was closer to her actual personality. ‘She’s stiff on film,’ he told the screenwriter John Michael Hayes, ‘and we have to open her out somehow.’ Hayes spent some time with her and wrote a part which brought out the gaiety and wit of her natural temperament. Hayes’ wife had been a professional model and that helped to create a background for the character that was authentic but also, to Jefferies, provocative.