Grace Kelly lets humour and desire show through the good manners without making a fuss of either. We rate her highly in Rear Window, where her warmth keeps pace with the suspense.
Fi1m perspective
In Rear Window (1954), Grace Kelly makes Lisa Fremont’s interest in James Stewart’s Jefferies worth watching alongside his interest in the neighbours. Her poise could easily keep us at a distance, but the humour and attraction in their exchanges make Lisa approachable. We warmed to her because Kelly gives the romance enough life to compete with the mystery. The film would be colder without her. We value that warmth more than the elegance for which she is so often remembered.
Her breakthrough came opposite Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952), a performance she herself criticised as inexperienced and unconvincing. That need not become our verdict, though it usefully checks the notion that she arrived fully formed. Mogambo (1953) followed, then Dial M for Murder (1954), her first film with Alfred Hitchcock. The assured Kelly of Rear Window was already some distance from that early self-assessment.
Hitchcock gives her room in Rear Window to contribute to the comedy and romance without making either feel like time away from the thriller. Stewart makes Jefferies’ curiosity companionable, and Kelly ensures that watching other people is not the only thing we care about. Some of their romantic dialogue sounds too carefully prepared, and the actors cannot quite make every exchange seem spontaneous. We occasionally notice the writing when we should be enjoying the conversation. Kelly’s warmth carries these passages through, though it does not make the stiffness disappear.
The Country Girl (1954) offered a less glamorous part as the long-suffering Georgie Elgin, a useful corrective to treating elegance as her sole accomplishment. The Hitchcock collaboration ended with To Catch a Thief (1955), opposite Cary Grant, and her final acting role came in High Society (1956). Eleven feature films leave us limited evidence of how far she might have developed beyond the poised women who dominate her reputation. We should be cautious about imagining the performances she never gave. Start with Rear Window, then try The Country Girl for a role that asks something different of her.
Biography
Grace Kelly was an American actress. She appeared as Lisa Fremont in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954).
Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Kelly trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her film debut in Fourteen Hours (1951) and gained prominence with roles in High Noon (1952) and Mogambo (1953). In 1954 she starred in Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and The Country Girl, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Other notable films include To Catch a Thief (1955) and High Society (1956).
Kelly retired from acting in 1956 upon her marriage to Prince Rainier III of Monaco. She died in 1982.
