In defense of Grace Kelly in Rear Window

wedge: I think how the way she seduces Jeffries...she's too elegant. And she's like a mannequin in a Burdines boutique.

She's elegant and that's the joke--complete mismatch with Jeffries, plus an ice-queen facade you would just love to violate (that moment between her and Raymond Burr, with Stewart watching, that turned me on). But she's a warm breathing human being underneath the facade, vulnerable to jibes about her upper-classism, and to Jeffries' reluctance to commit himself. Plus that slow-motion kiss introducing her to the film is (to me, anyway) like a fantasy of a kiss come true.

wedge: Hm, I think she was merely the atypical Hitchcock leading lady eh? Was used to seeing the Marion Cranes, the `I's, the Julies, the Alicias...tragic figures in tragic plots, deprived of a happy ending unlike Lisa Fremont.

Well, Janet Leigh in Psycho, that's Hitchcock in a different flavor. There's the thriller Hitchcock, the romantic Hitchcock, the light entertainment Hitchcock, with several films representing an overlap of either two or three qualities...and the observation that comedy especially light comedy is never as easy as it looks.

Which reminds me of a story: Cary Grant went to the Oscars one time, this was when he had long since retired, and at the door the girl asked him his name. When he told her, she said "You don't look like Cary Grant," to which he replied "Nobahdy daas, dahling!"