Forever.
So being able to see REAR WINDOW is a double miracle, and when the (I think) five “lost” Hitchcock films had been restored, they gave them a theatrical run before going to VHS. The first time I saw REAR WINDOW I was already a huge Hitchcock fan and had the poster (for a movie I had never seen) on my wall. The film was legendary...
And also kind of the “perfect storm” movie for Bill Martell. Because the short story the movie is based on was written by one of my favorite writers, Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich is credited as one of the three “founders” of noir fiction (along with Horace McCoy and James M. Cain - two of my other favorite writers). “Noir” comes from a series of novels Woolrich wrote with the word “Black” in the titles, BRIDE WORE BLACK, BLACK ALIBI, BACK PATH OF FEAR, etc. that had all of the hallmarks of what we now call Noir. Darkness, despair, and other words beginning with D... about normal people who wrestled with the darkness inside them as they crossed the line into criminal activities... on purpose... and stayed on the wrong side of that line.
In a typical thriller the protagonist might do something slightly wrong and spend the rest of the movie paying for it. In Noir fiction the protagonist did something illegal knowingly... and continued to do the wrong thing. The lead characters in stories by Woolrich and Cain (DOUBLE INDEMNITY) were the bad guys if the story were told from the authority’s POV. They were not gangsters or professional criminals, they were regular people who did the wrong thing. In DOUBLE INDEMNITY Walter Neff commits a perfect murder so that he can collect a man’s life insurance and collect his widow. In Woolrich’s BRIDE WORE BLACK Jill Killeen tracks down the people who were involved in the hit and run death of her husband and murders them one by one... until she realizes that the man who may be her only chance at a new relationship was one of them... will she kill him or kiss him? It’s Noir, so kill is the answer.
When Woolrich’s BLACK series were published in France, they became the Serie Noir (Black Series) and part of the general fiction classification of Roman Noir (black fiction - meaning dark fiction). When these Noir novels became films, those French dudes called them Film Noir, and it stuck. Roman Noir had a kind of resurgence in the 80s thanks to Black Lizard Press reissuing many of the novels from the 30s as well as the 50s roman noirs of Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford and others. These days, Hard Case Crime publishes some Hardboiled Detective fiction, some Crime Fiction, and some Roman Noir fiction. Eventually I will find a recording booth and put my Film Noir class on audio CD, and I’ll get into all of this stuff in more detail.
Hitchcock only made one film based on a Woolrich story, which is surprising, but directed several short stories for his TV show and one for a *rival* TV show (4 O’CLOCK - a real nail-biter of a story about a husband who plots his wife’s murder... then gets caught in his own trap and realizes *he* will die at 4 O’clock along with her!). Woolrich wrote all kinds of things for the pulp mags, from Noirs to Thrillers to Hardboiled to Crime Fiction to Police Procedurals to Supernatural stories to “Whiz Bangs” (sort of screwball crime fiction). REAR WINDOW, based on a story called IT HAD TO BE MURDER, was a straight thriller about a man confined to his apartment who thinks he may have seen a neighbor murder his wife. It’s a short story, and it’s all “did he or didn’t he?” Three characters - the protagonist, the killer, and the protag’s male servant. This was beautifully expanded by John Michael Hayes into a great nail biter of a suspense film which explores male and female relationships better than any rom-com or romantic drama you can name.
Nutshell: Magazine News Photographer L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is confined to his apartment with a broken leg, and spends his time watching his neighbors across the courtyard. He is engaged to a beautiful fashion model Lisa Freemont (Grace Kelly) whom he met on a shoot... but he is having all sorts of problems committing. He’s an adventurer who is used to living out of a backpack and sleeping on the ground when he’s on a story, she’s a fashion model who is used to a ton of luggage and first class hotels. In a way, this is the basic conflict in most male/female relationships, she wants nice things and he doesn’t care. Jeff has a nurse/physical therapist (the always great Thelma Ritter) and a cop best friend from back when he was covering the crime beat (Wendell Corey).
But it’s the people across the courtyard who are the focus of the film - as Jeff watches them, he learns all of the secrets of their lives... and one of those secrets may be murder. The traveling salesman Thorwald (Raymond Burr) may have murdered his nagging invalid wife. She seems to have vanished, and Thorwald is cleaning saws and big knives and has packed *something* in some cases that he sneaks out with in the middle of the night. Did he kill her and chop her up? Or is there some innocent explanation?
Hitch Appearance: Across the courtyard in the Composer’s apartment winding a clock.
The Experiment: I mentioned that Hitchcock usually does some interesting experiment in his films, from changing protagonists in PSYCHO to the continuous shot of ROPE (coming up) he doesn’t just make an emotionally involving thriller that is amazingly visual and uses the perfect combination of shots... he always seems to challenge himself by doing something that no one has ever done before on screen. You may never notice these experiments, because when they work they are completely invisible. In REAR WINDOW we get an interesting experiment in point of view - there isn’t a single shot where the camera is not in Jeff’s flat (until the very end). When we get a shot of some apartment across the courtyard, it is taken from inside Jeff’s flat. When we get a shot of inside Jeff’s flat, is taken from inside Jeff’s flat. When we get a shot of the street, it is taken from Jeff’s flat. Everything is seen through that rear window - everything. And, with the exception of one shot, we only see what Jeff sees. If he isn’t looking out the window, we don’t see it.
This puts us in Jeff’s shoes, and we see the story through his eyes. Not quite the total POV method of LADY IN THE LAKE (where we only see the protagonist when he looks in a mirror, and when he gets kissed or punched either the fist or the lips are coming right at us) or the opening of the noir flick DARK PASSAGE (based on a Goodis novel) where we escape from prison in pure POV shots. But - with the one exception - we see what he sees and nothing more... which makes it easy to identify with Jeff and easy to feel what he feels and suspect that Thorwald killed his wife.
In order to have the control over lighting and angle required to only show things through the rear window of Jeff’s apartment, they had to *build a city block of New York* in a studio at Paramount... including a street where real cars could drive back and forth. When you see the cars and the street and the buildings beyond - that’s a set built *indoors* on a sound stage!
One of the things I think is amusing - because we are always looking out Jeff’s apartment window, the facade of his building didn’t need to exist... except for a couple of shots at the end where he’s dangling out a window. So they had to build the exterior wall of Jeff’s apartment *just for those two or three shots*!
The idea of *only* seeing what Jeff can see creates identification with the character... and I can’t think of any movie made before or since that does this.
Kuleshov Experiment: The technical experiment Hitchcock did this time around was to replicate Lev Kuleshov’s experiment in the 1920s involving juxtaposition of images to create perceived emotions. The greatest acting in the world may just be editing. Kuleshov took Russia’s greatest stage actor, Ivan Mozzhukhin, and filmed him with a completely blank expression. Then he cut this shot with a shot of a bowl of soup... and Ivan looked hungry. Cut it with a shot of a woman in a coffin, and Ivan looked sad. Cut it with a shot of a puppy, and Ivan looked happy. This was shown to an audience and they all believed that Ivan’s facial expression had not only changed, but that he had reacted strongly to all of these things he was “looking at”. The audience was positive Ivan’s blank look was different in every shot. As an audience we connect the images in our minds and think we see Ivan crying or laughing - when he isn’t. We (the audience) “create” the acting in our minds.
So Hitchcock did the same thing with Jimmy Steward looking through his camera at the people across the courtyard. There is a sequence of shots that is Stewart with the exact same neutral expression, but when you cut in images of Miss Torso dancing topless, or sad Miss Lonelyhearts eating dinner alone, or the Composer struggling with his music; it *seems* as if Stewart is reacting to each - leering or looking sad or whatever. He’s not. When Hitchcock shot that footage of Stewart he had no idea what he’s be “looking at” - that happened in the cutting room. And you’d swear Stewart is smiling in some shots and looking concerned in others. In the original version of the Hitchcock/Truffaut book they had a page (or maybe two) that showed the “different” shots of Stewart alternating with the shots of the people he was “reacting” to - only it’s obvious that the different shots of Stewart are the same shot! In the reprint of the book, some idiot editor places the shot of Stewart on one side of the page - only one shot - and scatters the other photos on the page - not understanding that there was a reason *why* it was all the same shot of Stewart in the original version. That editor should throw themselves into an active volcano.
Great acting may just be a juxtaposition of images that makes you think the actor is changing expressions.
Great Scenes: In my Supporting Characters Blue Book I focus on how the characters across the courtyard are reflections of Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly’s characters - and how *every* character in this script illustrates a different aspect of the romantic problems that Stewart and Kelly’s characters are dealing with. The story outside is the story inside. That’s the great screenwriting lesson we can learn from REAR WINDOW - that your supporting characters represent different aspects of the protagonist’s emotional problem. So here we’re going to look at some of the great scenes in REAR WINDOW - and these scenes are even more amazing if you remember that we never leave that flat - everything is from single point of view.
Opening Shot: The film opens with the view out the window, from one building to the next, to L.B. Jeffries (Stewart) sleeping and sweating neat the window, to the thermometer heading towards 100', back out the window to each of our key characters across the courtyard, back to Jeff sleeping... in a wheelchair... to the cast on his leg, to smashed up professional camera on his table and to the photo of the race car wreck heading right at the camera framed on the wall, to a series of other photos on his wall - war, news, exotic locations - to a new camera, to the negative of a beautiful woman and to the cover of a fashion magazine with the shot of the beautiful woman (Grace Kelly). One shot that gives us all of this information. As writers we don’t get to chose whether it’s one shot or a dozen, but we *can* open a script with visual information like this.
The Kiss: Grace Kelly’s character Lisa is introduced in the flesh when Jeff wakes up and she kisses him. This is a great scene - faces close - that shows how comfortable they are together, how intimate their relationship is. She has brought him dinner, and they have an argument about their future - when you only have two characters in a room, the type of push-and-pull emotional relationship creates some great dramatic peaks and valleys. They are in love, but Jeff doesn’t think they can live together, let alone get married. By the end of this series of scenes, Lisa tells Jeff she’s in love with him... then they break up.
Have to mention the beautiful Robert Burks color cinematography with deep shadows and lighting that seems natural - pools of darkness where there are no lights.
Scream In The Night: Jeff is awakened by a woman’s scream, something crashing... then sees the traveling salesman Thorwald (Raymond Burr) across the courtyard leaving his apartment with his sample case... at 2:30 in the morning. He returns and leaves again - several times. Why?
One of the great things about this film is that we see what Jeff sees (except for one shot) and we must assemble the puzzle pieces just as he does. And that leaves room for doubt - we never see Thorwald kill his wife, so what if he didn’t do it? What if all of this is just Jeff’s (and our) over-active imagination?
While You Were Sleeping: While Jeff is sleeping we see a shot that he does not - Thorwald and a woman dressed in black leaving the Thorwald apartment. Mrs. Thorwald? The great thing about this shot is that it plants doubt in *our* minds. We worry that Jeff is completely wrong about what happened, which involves the audience in the story.
Coming Attractions: We get a series of scenes between Jeff and Lisa where they debate - did he or didn’t he kill his wife? And how terrible a job it would be to chop up a human body into pieces that would fit in the sample case... and the trunk he’s shipping.
There are a couple of great little suspense scenes in these scenes where Jeff is afraid Thorwald will see him watching. Because Jeff is in the wheelchair, it’s tough to back out of the line of sight quickly... did Thorwald see him?
Lisa decides to spend the night with Jeff (and sex is implied as a possibility, except for that cast) and she shows him her lingerie - a “preview of coming attractions”.
And that’s when Jeff’s cop friend Doyle (Wendel Corey) stops by and the three debate whether Thorwald is guilty and what each of the facts mean. Doyle has a logical explanation for everything - proves that there was no murder.
Not Much of a Snifter: Now here is where a prop guy can screw up a whole movie... Lisa serves brandy to everyone - but it’s Jeff’s apartment, not really set up for social functions. And Doyle says, “Not much of a snifter, is it?” - except it’s a friggin’ great looking brandy snifter that they probably paid a bunch of money for. The line was written for a jelly glass or a tumbler or something, and makes no sense when they have this great brandy snifter.
The Dog Who Knew Too Much: When the older couple’s dog begins digging around in Thorwald’s flower beds a couple of days later, Thorwald removes the dog... and later the dog is killed. Murdered. Everyone in the courtyard comes to their windows as the older couple deals with the dead dog... except one person. Thorwald.
Shrinking Violets: Why would Thorwald murder the dog? Here we get a great piece of visual story telling - Jeff has taken pictures of the flower beds, and when he compares the pictures of the flower beds to how the look now, the flowers have grown *shorter*. We see the slide of the flower beds and then the actual flower beds, so that *we* (the audience) can actually see the difference ourselves.
Breaking In: Lisa and Nurse Stella decide to go across the courtyard - into enemy territory - to dig up the flower bed and find whatever is buried there. Jeff calls Thorwald, pretends to be a blackmailer, and gets him out of the apartment for a while. Just that Thorwald leaves seems damning. When they find nothing in the flower bed, Lisa climbs the fire escape and breaks into Thorwald’s apartment - finding his wife’s wedding ring. Proof that the wife is dead. And that’s when Thorwald returns... and the suspense becomes unbearable. Because Jeff has to watch, helpless, as the woman he loves is hiding in the apartment when the killer comes back. It’s not *if* Thorwald will find her, it’s *when*... and this scene is a huge nail biter.
Watching helplessly as someone you love is in trouble is one of the iconic scenes in thriller films, and this scene milks every second of suspense. It’s not Jeff who is trapped, it’s the woman he loves.
Flash Bulbs As A Weapon: Lisa is Thorwald’s clue to Jeff... and the killer comes for a man trapped in a wheel chair, trapped in his flat... helpless.
And here’s what is great about this scene...
We hear Thorwald coming.
A window breaks. Then heavy footsteps up the stairs. Climbing closer and closer to the apartment where Jeff is trapped in his wheel chair. And the suspense builds. Jeff tries to find a weapon - but he’s a *photographer* not a cop or a spy or anyone who might have a gun. All he has are cameras and camera equipment. Hitchcock had this theory that I called Hitchcock’s Chocolates when I did an article about it for Script Magazine, that characters use the tools that characters are comfortable using. In RED EYE when Rachel McAdams is being chased by the killer - she grabs her field hockey stick to defend herself. It was established very early in the film that field hockey was her sport. So she grabbed the tool she was most comfortable with and used it as a weapon. In REAR WINDOW we have a photographer - what are the tools that he uses in his every day life and how can they be used as weapons?
Jeff turns off all of the light sin his apartment and when Thorwald breaks in, he sets off a flashbulb right in his face - blinding him! Every time Thorwald regains his vision and moves closer, Jeff sets off another flashbulb... buying time until Lt. Doyle arrives. But soon he runs oout of flashbulbs and Thorwald grabs him and they fight... a good sloppy rough looking fight.
Cast Party: Ending with Jeff going out his apartment window and landing in the courtyard... breaking his other leg a day before he would have gotten his cast off. Ironic! But also a fitting end. We need to have the *best* ending for the screenplay, and here we have a story that comes full circle - it begins with Jeff and a broken leg and ends with Jeff and a broken leg... just the *other* leg this time.
Head In A Hatbox And that’s what was buried in the flower bed.
Sound Track: One of the cool things about REAR WINDOW is that all of the music (except for the opening title music) comes from some source - a radio, the composer playing his piano, a record playing in an apartment across the courtyard. The opening title music and the song the composer is struggling with are written by Franz Waxman and have a jazzy sound to them. By the way, the composer is played by the guy who would later become “David Seville” from the Chipmunks cartoons (and novelty records). But the real sounds of the street, of people talking, of music on radios far away gives the film a feeling of overheard life that matches the voyeuristic plot. They actually measured off the distance between source of the sound and Jeff’s apartment and recorded the music from that distance so that it would sound right. And everything has that tinny real life sound. The sound design on this film is probably never discussed, but’s amazing.
REAR WINDOW is one of the best Hitchcock films - and holds up pretty well. I haven’t mentioned the dialogue, but everyone has great lines in this film. Instead of some bland answer to a question, characters rattle off great one-liners that fit their characters and are clever as can be. I wish I could write stuff this good. Watching it again to write this, I think it’s one of the best films ever made about the difficulties of modern romance and the problems involved with chopping up bodies *and* getting your apartment cleaning deposit back.
Classes On CD On Sale!
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: When Concepts Conflict! and a long forgotten Eddie Murphy movie.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Salad - healthy!
Bicycle: Rode into Toluca Lake to meet Jeremiah Daws.
Pages: Well, this blog post... but still stuck on a scene on the spec.
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