Comfy, Cozy Cinema is a collaboration of Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
They
have a list of movies to watch for September and October. I was late to
the game and not having subscribed to any streaming platforms, I
probably wouldn't have been able to watch everything, anyway - but of course "Rear Window" is one of the Hitchcock movies in my old-fashioned DVD collection.Copyrighted by Paramount International. Artists(s) not known. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Get
ready for a few spoilers, so if you have actually managed to miss the
movie until now, you may not want to read any further, I'm not going to
give the end away this time, though.
What would you do if you
were in a cast that makes it really hard for you to get around at all, so you spend most of your recovery time in a wheelchair in your apartment?
(Overthinking
segment: Would they even use a cast like that today? I had to do some
quick googling and from what it looks like that's very rare.
Overthinking finished.)
If you were a successful and high energy
photographer, you would probably not be happy beading or stitching or
whatever one of us may do for distraction. L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies is such a
photographer, and being stuck in his hot apartment like that and bored, he is
spending his time on watching the little world he can see through his
window - meaning he is spying on his neighbors, the pretty young dancer,
the composer working on a new piece of music, the newlyweds, the
childless couple with the little dog, the lonely woman, the sculptor,
and then there are the man and his ill wife who hardly ever gets out of
bed.
Lisa is Jeff's girlfriend, a beautiful model who regularly comes to visit, and then there is Stella, the nurse.
At
first both of them disapprove of Jeff's spying very much, but then they
too get drawn in more and more, especially when the ill wife suddenly
disappears.
Jeff is convinced that her husband has murdered and
dismembered her, and the more they see, so are Lisa and Stella. He asks
an old friend for help who is working for the police now, but whose
enquiries don't turn anything up except that Mr. Thorwald has taken his
wife to the train and that she has already sent a postcard.
So they
decide to find out as much as possible by themselves, provoking Thorwald
hoping he will make a mistake, and Lisa even goes to search his
apartment which puts her in danger while Jeff and Stella watch it in
horror, not being able to help.
Lisa gets away, but unfortunately that way Thorwald finds out he's being watched and from where and he has to act ...
"Rear Window" is based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich, "It Had To Be Murder" from 1942
which I hadn't known before, but now read for this post. Not
necessarily a good idea, but in this case I'm fine with it. Although
there are differences, I get why there had to be in order to pad the
story for a feature film, in a good way, too.
Neither Lisa nor Stella are there in the
story, instead there's the day houseman Sam, but actually the ladies being there
tells us a lot about Jeff which you don't have in the story
For
example, Jeff is afraid of being tied down by marriage thinking that
his lifestyle of a travelling photographer and that of socialite Lisa
won't go together. Lisa, on the other hand, does everything now to prove to him that there
is more to her than just being beautiful. Stella in her practical way
doesn't hold back saying things out loud that the others may just hint
at, be it about marriage or possible details of the murder.
All of the neighbors actually don't play a role in the short story. They
are mentioned at the beginning, but the focus is on Jeff and on
Thorwald which I felt gives the story an even more isolated feel.
In
the movie Jeff is a part of this neighborhood which he can only see
through his window for the moment,
watching all those small stories develop, however individually as there is no neighborly interaction at the time.
That is also most of what we see (except for one scene that shows the yard from all
sides and has all the neighbors coming to the windows), we become
voyeurs through Jeff's eyes, then we see his reaction to what happens
out there. The movie never moves away from this yard.
In a making-of
about the movie, the assistent director said they had one scene in the
office of Jeff's editor, but that he told Hitchcock he thought they
shouldn't use it, and so in the end they didn't.
I asked family
what they had to say about the movie without thinking for too long and I
got "suspense, great shots, a beautiful woman, great clothes".
I can
only agree and think Edith Head's designs do deserve mentioning. The
clothes she put on Grace Kelly were absolutely gorgeous and I swoon over
the one she is wearing when you see her for the first time.
I do have one small complaint, though.
In
the short story Mrs. Thorwald is chronically ill (probably, after all Jeff never meets her), but she is neither
bickering nor laughing at her husband. Showing her doing that in the
movie seems to be hinting at him just having enough of that, Jeff even
mentions the fighting to his detective friend. The unconfirmed theory in
the short story is that Thorwald probably got insurance for her and
killed her when she caught him out trying to slowly poison her hoping to
get a new life with his mistress. Nothing points at her having provoked
anything.
I won't be there next time when (the real ;-)) Lisa
and Erin will be watching another Hitchcock movie with Grace Kelly, "Dial M For Murder", because I don't own that movie and I don't like to
talk about it just from memory, but I will definitely be heading over to
their blogs.
10/19/2024
Comfy, Cozy Cinema 2024 - Rear Window
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I am so happy that you watched and posted! I didn't know about the short story, I will have to look it up. And I am also very glad that they didn't include the scene in Jeff's office. It kept the movie in this little world of his apartment complex, and that would have taken us too far out of it. And Grace Kelly's clothing - so beautiful! That black and white dress is gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Erin!
DeletePosts like this one take me forever because I keep going down one rabbit hole to the next, but that's half the fun, right?
Hi Cat, I love reading cozy crime but haven't seen any of your Cosy cinema movies! I might just have to look them up. Those were the days when film stars were so charasmatic. x Sue from Women Living Well After 50
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, Sue!
DeleteYou are so right about the charisma. I have to admit I'm hopelessly old-fashioned in that regard. I'll take charisma over super special effects anytime!
That is a great movie, isn’t it? Hitchcock’s greatest gift imo is getting into the human mind when it lets its imagination run wild. But in his movies those wild imaginings are often true. I love his movies!
ReplyDeleteHave you ever read Hitchcock/Truffaut? So interesting!
DeleteCat,
ReplyDeleteI remember watching this movie when I was a kid....Hitchcock was a genius....Thanks so much for stopping by!!
Hugs,
Deb
Debbie-Dabble blog
Thank you for having a look, Deb!
DeleteHe was really amazing as director (but terrible with his female leads), but never forget the woman behind the man, his wife who was his most important consultant!