Like many of the best works of classical Hollywood cinema, Rear Window is a deceptively obvious film. Its chief virtues are clearly visible for all to see. An exemplary instance of commercial motion picture entertainment, it represents the best that Hollywood had to offer its audiences in the tumultuous 1950s. (Indeed, its classic status continued to be reaffirmed in the 1990s; in 1997, the Librarian of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry, and in 1998, it was listed among the American Film Institute's best 100 American films of all time.) Filmed in glorious Technicolor and projected on a big screen in a widescreen format, it is, on a purely technological level, a compelling example of 1950s motion picture spectacle. Though its subject matter lacks the epic proportions of that era's big-budget biblical spectacles, costume pictures, or westerns, its basic situation is pure spectacle. Indeed, its story is “about” spectacle; it explores the fascination with looking and the attraction of that which is being looked at. The story goes as follows: Confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg, photo journalist L. B. Jefferies (James Stewart) has little to do but to look out his rear window at his Greenwich Village neighbors. He suspects that one of them, a jewelry salesman named Thorwald, has murdered his invalid wife. With the help of his girl-friend, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), and his nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), he continues to observe Thorwald until evidence is discovered that confirms that Thorwald did, indeed, kill his wife.