Rear Window
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| Rear Window | |
|---|---|
| Image:Rearwindowposter.jpg Movie Poster | |
| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Produced by | Uncredited: Alfred Hitchcock |
| Written by | Short story: Cornell Woolrich "It Had to Be Murder" Screenplay John Michael Hayes |
| Starring | James Stewart Grace Kelly Thelma Ritter Wendell Corey Raymond Burr Judith Evelyn |
| Music by | Franz Waxman |
| Cinematography | Robert Burks |
| Editing by | George Tomasini |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures (1954-83) Universal Studios (since 1983) USA Films (2000 re-release) |
| Release date(s) | Image:Flag of the United States.svg August 1, 1954 |
| Running time | 112 min. |
| Country | Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$ 1,000,000 |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Rear Window is a 1954 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story It Had to Be Murder. It stars James Stewart as photojournalist L. B. Jefferies, Grace Kelly as his fashion model girlfriend Lisa Carol Fremont, and Raymond Burr as the suspected killer, Lars Thorwald. The film combines its main theme of a murder mystery with a critical examination of the ethics of marriage and voyeurism.
The film is considered by many film goers, critics and scholars to be one of Hitchcock's best and most thrilling pictures.[1] Rear Window is one of several films directed by Hitchcock originally released by Paramount Pictures, that were acquired by Universal Studios in later years.
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[edit] Plot summary
L. B. "Jeff" Jefferies (James Stewart) is a professional photographer who has been confined to his Greenwich Village apartment after an accident has left him with his leg in a cast.
Suffering from boredom, he takes to spying on his neighbors through the rear window. His view of the back of several apartment buildings, their inner courtyard, and the persons dwelling within at first have a strongly Norman Rockwell feel about them. Over time, however, Jeff comes to believe a murder has taken place in the building across the courtyard, though his friends, his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), and his girlfriend, Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) initially think his beliefs are imagined, and put them down to his idle behavior.
Almost the entire movie is filmed from inside Jeff's bedroom, and most of the point of view (POV) shots are Jeff's. However, at key points in the movie this rule is broken (usually as a dual or triple POV shot, but also the single POV shots of Doyle, Stella, and Lisa).
Furthermore, there is at least one moment when the viewer sees something while Jeff is asleep, and in two key sequences, characters are seen from angles not possible from Jeff's window. This trend increases throughout the film until the final sequence, when Jefferies' POV is nearly subverted.
The character of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) is not seen in close-up and cannot be heard speaking clearly until the climax of the movie. At this point, he appears in Jeff's room. This scene features a sequence shown from Thorwald's point of view as he attempts to proceed towards Jeff, but is repeatedly stopped as Jeff blinds him with his camera flash.
Lars Thorwald succeeds in pushing Jefferies out of the window just as the police arrive and arrest Lars Thorwald for the murder of his wife. The film concludes with Jefferies and Lisa in Jefferies apartment with Lisa preparing for a life with Jefferies.
[edit] Synopsis
L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) recuperates from a broken leg during a sweltering New York summer. As a sucessful photographer, he's known for taking difficult pictures no one else can get, including the one of an out-of-control race car which smashed his camera and broke his leg an instant after it was snapped. Jeffries lives in a small third-floor apartment, and spends his time looking out the rear window into the courtyard of the building; he can also see into the lives of all his neighbors, catching glimpses of their daily routines. It's the sort of thing only an invalid might do, watching them eat, clean, sleep and argue. There's the girl who exercises in her underwear, the married couple who sleep on their small balcony to beat the heat, the struggling songwriter working at his piano; and there's the salesman who lives across the courtyard from Jeffries, the one with the nagging bedridden wife. They seem to fight all too often.
Every day a therapist comes to visit Jeffries, dispensing her mature wisdom and berating him for sitting there all day spying on his neighbors. Stella (Thelma Ritter) tells him she can smell trouble coming. He should get his mind off his neighbors and think about marrying that beautiful girlfriend of his. Jeffries replies that he's not ready for marriage. Sure, she's a wonderful girl, but she's also a rich, sucessful socialite, and Jeffries lives the life of a war correspondent, always on the go, usually living out his suitcase and often in an unpleasant environment. It's not the life he wants to offer her. "Well" says Stella, "that girl is packed with love for you right down to her fingertips."
"That Girl" arrives shortly after Stella leaves. Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) breezes in wearing a stunning satin dress, looking every inch the beautiful socialite she is, and obviously very much in love with Jeffries. They have dinner, but soon enough the conversation turns to the future, and they quarrel. Jeffries sees no way they can reconcile their different lifestyles, and she walks to the door, telling him goodby. "When will I see you again?" asked Jeffries.
"Not for a long time," she replies sadly. "At least, not until tomorrow night."
The night drags by, and it's too hot for Jeffries to sleep. It starts to rain. He dozes in his wheelchair by the window, but notices activity across the yard. The salesman goes out carrying his heavy silver sample case, and Jeffries looks at his watch: it's 2:00am. The blinds in the bedroom are drawn, so Jeffries can't see the wife. Later, the salesman returns, lifting the case easily, as if it were empty. Twice more he goes out in the rain in the middle of the night, lugging the heavy case, but coming home with it lighter. Intrigued, Jeffries wonders what the salesman is doing, but he finally dozes off around daybreak.
Discussing the incident with Stella, and then later with Lisa, they all begin to watch the salesman. With the blinds now open, they can see that the wife is gone. Jeffries pulls out his binoculars, and then a large telephoto lens to get a better look. They watch as he goes into the kitchen and cleans a large knife and saw. Later, he ties a large packing crate with heavy rope, and has moving men come and haul the crate away. Stella runs around the front of the building to catch the name of the moving company, but misses the truck. By now they're all thinking the same thing; there's foul play going on, and the missing wife has been murdered by the salesman. They check his name on the front of the building: Lars Thorwald.
Jeffries calls in an old Army buddy who is now a detective, and explains the situation to him. Naturally he doesn't believe a word of it, and tells Jeffries to stick to photography. After further checking, the detective finds that Mrs. Thorwald is in the country, has sent a postcard to her husband, and the packing crate they had seen was full of her clothes. Chastised, they all admit to being a little ghoulish, even disappointed when they find out there wasn't a murder after all. Jeffries and Lisa settle down for an evening alone, but soon a scream pierces the courtyard. One of the neighbors had a little dog they would let roam around the yard, and now it's dead. It's neck is broken. All of the neighbors rush to their windows to see what's happened, except for one. Jeffries notices that Thorwald sits unmoving in his dark apartment, with only the tip of his cigarette glowing.
Convinced that Thorwald is guilty after all, they slip a letter under his door asking "What have you done with her?" and then watch his reaction. Calling his apartment, Jeffries tells Thorwald to meet him at a bar down the street, as a pretext to getting him out of the apartment. He thinks Thorwald killed the little dog to keep it from digging up something buried in the courtyard flower patch. When Thorwald leaves, Lisa and Stella grab a shovel and start digging, but after a few minutes, they find nothing.
Refusing to give up, Lisa climbs the fire escape to Thorwald's apartment and squeezes in an open window, much to Jeffries' alarm. Rummaging around the apartment, Lisa finds Mrs. Thorwald's purse and wedding ring, things she surely would never have left behind on a trip. She holds them up for Jeffries to see, but he can only watch in terror as Thorwald comes back up the stairs to the apartment. Lisa is trapped.
Calling the police as Thorwald goes in, he and Stella watch helplessly as Lisa tries to hide, but is found by Thorwald moments later. They see her try to talk her way out, but Thorwald grabs and begins to assault her. Terrified by their helplessness, they can only watch as he turns out the lights and listen as Lisa screams for help. The police arrive and beat on Thorwald's door, saving Lisa just in time.
Jeffries watches from across the courtyard as the police question Lisa, then arrest her. Her back is to him, and he see her hands behind her back pointing to Mrs. Thorwald's ring, which is now on her finger. Thorwald sees this as well, and realizing that she's signaling to someone across the way, looks up directly at Jeffries with murderous understanding.
Pulling back into the dark, Jeffries calls his detective friend, who agrees to help get Lisa out of jail, and is now convinced that Thorwald is guilty of something. Stella takes all the cash they have for bail and heads for the police station. Jeffries is left alone, and looking back over to Thorwald's apartment, he see all the lights are off. Down below, he hears the door to his own building slam shut, then slow footsteps begin climbing the stairs. Thorwald is coming for him, and he's trapped in his wheelchair.
Looking for a weapon, he can find only the flash for his camera. He grabs a box of flashbulbs, and under his door he see the hall lights go off. Footsteps stop outside his door, then it slowly opens. Thorwald stands in the dark looking at Jeffries. "Who are you," he says heavily. "What do you want from me?" Jeffries doesn't answer, but as Thorwald comes for him he sets off the flash, blinding Thorwald for a few seconds.
He is slowed but not stopped, and Jeffries keeps setting off flashbulbs in Thorwald's face, but he finally fumbles his way to Jeffries wheelchair, then grabs him and pushes him towards the open window. Fighting to stay alive, Jeffries cannot stop Thorwald, and is pushed out. Hanging onto the ledge, yelling for help, he sees the Lisa, the detective and the police all rush in. Thorwald is pulled back, but it's too late; Jeffries slips and falls just as the police run up beneath him. Luckily, they break his fall, and Lisa sweeps him up in her arms. Thorwald confesses to the murder of his wife, and the police take him away.
A few days later the heat has lifted, and Jeffries sleeps peacefully in his wheelchair, now with two broken legs from the fall. Lisa reclines happily next to him, now wearing blue jeans and a simple blouse, and reading a camping book. She smiles at him as he sleeps, but pulls out a hidden fashion magazine from under the cushion.
[edit] Hitchcock's cameo
Alfred Hitchcock appears briefly onscreen in the film as the man winding the clock in the songwriter's apartment as he (the songwriter) is performing the piece that he had been working on during the course of the film.
[edit] Analysis
Hitchcock's fans and film scholars have taken particular interest in the way the relationship between Jeff and Lisa can be compared to the lives of the neighbors they are spying upon. Many of these points are considered in Tania Modleski's feminist theory book, The Women Who Knew Too Much. (ISBN 0-415-97362-7)[2]
- Thorwald and his wife are a reversal of Jeff and Lisa (Thorwald looks after his invalid wife just as Lisa looks after the invalid Jeff). However, Thorwald's hatred of his nagging wife mirrors Jeff's arguments with Lisa.
- The newlywed couple initially seem perfect for each other (they spend nearly the entire movie in their bedroom with the blinds drawn), but at the end we see that their marriage is in trouble and the wife begins to nag the husband. Similarly, Jeff is afraid of being 'tied down' by marriage to Lisa.
- The middle-aged couple with the dog seem content living at home. They have the kind of uneventful lifestyle that horrifies Jeff.
- The music composer and Miss Lonely Heart, the depressed spinster, lead frustrating lives, and at the end of the movie find comfort in each other (the composer's new tune draws Miss Lonely Heart away from suicide, and the composer thus finds value in his work). There is a subtle hint in this tale that Lisa and Jeff are meant for each other, despite his stubbornness. The piece the composer creates is called "Lisa's Theme" in the credits.
The movie invites speculation as to which of these paths Jefferies and Lisa will follow.
The characters themselves verbally point out a similarity between Lisa and Miss Torso (played by Georgine Darcy) - the scantily-clad ballet dancer who has all-male parties.
A thoughtful analysis of Rear Window can be found in John Fawell's book The Well-Made Film. Other analysis centers on the relationship between Jeff and the other side of the apartment block, seeing it as a symbolic relationship between spectator and screen. Film theorist Mary Ann Doane has made the argument that Jeff, representing the audience, becomes obsessed with the screen, where a collection of storylines are played out. This line of analysis has often followed a feminist approach to interpreting the film. It is Doane who, using Freudian analysis to claim women spectators of a film become "masculinized," pays close attention to Jeff's rather passive attitude to romance with the elegant Lisa, that is, until she crosses over from the spectator side to the screen, seeking out the wedding ring of Thorwald's murdered wife. It is only then that Jeff shows real passion for Lisa. In the climax, when he is pushed through the window (the screen), he has been forced to become part of the show.
Further analysis into Jefferies' character could also be interpreted as somewhat of a voyeur. Because of Jeff's sexual frustration with Lisa, he may look to other sources to fulfill his sexual need.
[edit] Legacy
Brian De Palma paid homage to Rear Window with his movie Body Double (which also added touches of Hitchcock's Vertigo). The 2001 film Head Over Heels starring Freddie Prinze Jr., in which a young woman falls for a man she believes she saw commit a murder, closely follows the plot of Rear Window, as well as the 2007 film Disturbia - although in this film, there is no accident, and the suspect has no wife. Marcos Bernstein's The Other Side of The Street (2004) also makes a reference to Rear Window, albeit with a Brazilian twist. Many animated series, including Tiny Toon Adventures, Rocket Power, The Simpsons, Rocko's Modern Life, Home Movies, That ´70s Show and The Venture Bros. have paid homage to Rear Window in different ways. Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath is another film that pays tribute to this film and other Hitchcock features. Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery, in which Allen and his wife suspect an elderly neighbor of murdering his wife and are forced to investigate for themselves when no one else takes their concerns seriously, could also be said to owe a debt to Rear Window.
This movie has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The film was restored by the team of Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz for its 1999 limited theatrical re-release and the Collector's Edition DVD release.
The film received four Academy Award nominations: Best Director for Alfred Hitchcock, Best Screenplay for John Michael Hayes, Best Cinematography, Color for Robert Burks, Best Sound Recording for Loren L. Ryder, Paramount Pictures.
This film was ranked #14 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills. It was ranked #48 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition). To this day, the film gets a 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ownership of the copyright in Woolrich's original story was eventually litigated before the United States Supreme Court in Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 (1990). The film was copyrighted in 1954 by Patron Inc. — a production company set up by Hitchcock and Stewart. As a result, Stewart and Hitchcock's estate became involved in the Supreme Court case.
The film was shot entirely at Paramount studios, including an enormous set on one of the soundstages, and employed the Technicolor process in use at the time. There was also careful use of sound, including natural sounds and music drifting across the apartment building courtyard to James Stewart's apartment. At one point, the voice of Bing Crosby can be heard singing "To See You Is to Love You" originally from the Paramount release Road to Bali (1952).
Hitchcock used famed designer Edith Head to design costumes in all of his Paramount films. (She continued to design costumes for his films when Hitchcock moved to MGM in 1959 and then to Universal in 1960 until the end of his career.) With Hitchcock's encouragement, Head designed especially "romantic" dresses for Grace Kelly.[3]
[edit] Re-tellings
Since Rear Window is considered one of Hitchcock's classics, it has been re-told and spoofed a number of times in a number of ways:
- Film
- Clubhouse Detectives is a 1996 retelling, aimed at a younger audience, where a young boy sees a neighbor kill a student and bury her under his floor boards.
- In 1998, Christopher Reeve starred in a remake that retained the original title, but had the main character completely paralyzed instead of just having a recently broken leg (due to Reeve's real life condition).
- Disturbia is a modern day (2007) retelling, with the protagonist (Shia LaBeouf) under house arrest instead of laid up with a broken leg.
- Television
- The Simpsons episode "Bart of Darkness" is heavily influenced by the movie, with Bart breaking his leg and coming to the belief that he witnesses Ned Flanders killing his wife. There is a reference to Rear Window with a James Stewart character in the episode.
- In a Halloween themed episode of That 70's Show, "Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die", Fez and Hyde spoof the film after Fez breaks his leg and spies on Bob, thinking he killed Midge.
- An episode of Home Movies, "Definite Possible Murder" also retold the story when the main character, Brendon, broke his leg and thought he saw a new neighbor (appropriately named Raymond Burley) acting suspiciously.
- An episode of Rocko's Modern Life is also based on Rear Window.
- An episode of My Life in Film is also based on Rear Window.
- An episode of Ugly Betty is also based on Rear Window.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1017289-rear_window/
- ^ Modleski, Tania, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc., 1989)
- ^ Review by Robert E. Nylund
[edit] External links
- Rear Window (1954) at the Internet Movie Database
- Rear Window (1998 remake) at the Internet Movie Database
- Rear Window at Box Office Mojo
- skyjude - movie legends
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