9/5/2019 Rear Window Script
Cornell Woolrich is probably best known as the guy who wrote the story that became Rear Window (and possibly, to a lesser extent, the guy who wrote The Phantom Lady). As a pulp writer who make efforts to break into Hollywood, it's probably fairly difficult to pay the bills, but fortunately his economic suffering is out gain.
By the late ’40s, Alfred Hitchcock had made roughly 40 films, and like many great artists, he had become restless in his work. Yearning to stretch the boundaries of a medium he had so clearly mastered, he began what some would call his “experimental phase,” a creative flourish that produced Rope (1948), a film shot in ten long “single takes” to create the illusion of one continuous shot; Dial M for Murder (1954), which dabbled in a 3D technology that allowed Grace Kelly to lift a pair of scissors off the screen; even The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955), where he inserted the Doris Day musical number “Que Sera, Sera.”The greatest in this experimental period was, of course, Rear Window. Here, Hitchcock concocted his most original, most challenging concept yet: to create an entire film from one vantage point, the rear window of a Greenwich Village apartment, and in turn, symbolize the very movie-watching experience and director-viewer relationship that made him a legend.You won’t find a movie that carries as much surface level suspense, underlying character subtext, and self-reflexive directorial vision than Rear Window. And while there are many movies about movies, none better than the “movie” Stewart watches — and cuts together with his own eyes — out his own rear window.“ Rear Window is sort of Hitchcock’s testament film,” critic/director Peter Bagdonovich said. “It’s a French term, meaning that in Rear Window, perhaps you see the best example of what Hitchcock’s cinema at its best stood for.” (H)Plot SummaryThe film’s vantage point is the one held by L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies (James Stewart), a traveling photojournalist, who loves living out of a suitcase and seeing the world. In other words, he lives the life that Stewart’s George Bailey wanted but could never have in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).
For such an on-the-go guy, his current condition is particularly frustrating. While photographing a recent auto race, Jeff was apparently hit by one of the cars and broke his leg.
Now he’s resigned to sitting in a wheelchair all day in a leg cast, with nothing to do but stare out the rear window of his apartment and “people watch.” The binoculars and long telephoto lenses he has lying around from his profession come in pretty handy.Of his many neighbors, Jeff becomes most obsessed with Mr. Thorwald, the feuding husband and wife who share a three-window apartment directly across from his. One day, Jeff sees them arguing, and after hearing a loud crash and scream that night, notices the wife is missing the next morning. Jeff continues to watch as Mr. Thorwald (Raymond Burr) behaves suspiciously, rolling up his wife’s bedcovers, wrapping a knife and saw in newspaper and making mysterious late-night trips out of the building carrying his sample case. Is Thorwald simply making night runs as a salesman?
Or, has something more heinous actually occured?Jeff’s fiery old caretaker, Stella (Thelma Ritter), discourages him from getting involved, as does his fashion model girlfriend, Lisa Carol Freemont (Grace Kelly), who wants him to pay her as much attention as he does his voyeuristic whimsies. But as Jeff continues to piece together the puzzle, his case for Mrs.
Thorwald’s murder becomes more compelling, and eventually, Lisa and Stella are enveloped in the same curiosity. They become Jeff’s confidants, unlike the cynical detective Lt.
Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey), and eventually become Jeff’s legs, going where he can’t to investigate clues in the courtyard below and in Thowarld’s very apartment.ScreenplayWritten by John Michael Hayes from the 1942 short story It Had to Be Murder by Cornell Woolrich, the Oscar-nominated script draws from two real-life incidents. The first, from 1924 Sussex, England, saw Patrick Mahon dismember the body of his mistress and store the pieces in a large trunk, tin cans and hatbox. The second, from 1910 London, saw Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen cut up his wife’s body and run off with his secretary, who was later caught wearing the wife’s jewelry. Hitch knew these stories well and was thrilled to apply them to his own unique blend of suspense and black comedy.
(G)Though he never asked for a writing credit, Hitchcock worked tirelessly on the script with Hayes — their first of four together. You can imagine the giant blocks of text devoted entirely to image and action in that script, as we do more watching here than most any other movie. That’s not to say the dialogue isn’t great, particularly Stella spouting such lines as, “When a man and a woman see each other and like each other, they oughta come together, wham, like a couple of taxis on Broadway.”The WGA recently voted Rear Window one of the, and to this day it remains a textbook example of how to unravel a mystery. While Jeff is ultimately right about most of his suspicions, the script keeps us enthralled with the desire to prove him right.A Signature CastFor Stewart, Jeff is the type of complex role any actor would kill to play: lovable yet fetishistic, full of curiosity and blind to his own saving “Grace.” The role marked a change for Stewart as the moment he shed his “aw shucks” reputation and embraced a darker intensity that was already showing up in such westerns as Winchester 73 (1950), The Naked Spur (1953) and The Far Country (1954).
How better to mine the depths of darkness than with Hitchcock?Rear Window was Stewart’s second of four collaborations with Hitch, after Rope (1948) and before both The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertigo (1958). Still, Stewart always considered Rear Window his favorite. When I see him remove his shirt to reveal a scrawny yet flabby body, I smirk thinking about a time when movie heroes didn’t have to be jacked up. And maybe it was better that way. It meant they had to act.
Jeff doesn’t need big guns. We watch him because he is a compelling character, period. More actors today should work on chiseling their characters as much as their bodies.As for Grace Kelly, she is both divine to look at and pivotal in her performance. From the moment Hitch introduces her in that slow-motion, soft-focus kiss, we can’t stop looking at her — much in the way Jeff does the minute she shows an adventurous side. While Hitchcock felt she needed to look a little more “bosomy,” Kelly stayed true to herself, refused to wear “falsies” and altered her posture with a few wardrobe modifications by the indelible Edith Head. (A) No one rocked an Edith Head costume better than Kelly.
Sexy doesn’t even begin to describe it; neither does decadent. If you haven’t had a lesson in the class of Princess Grace, Rear Window is all you need.The film came at the height of her glamour.
When she received her Oscar for The Country Girl (1954), it might as well have been a nod to her two collaborations with Hitchcock that year, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window. The following year she would return with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955), carousing with Cary Grant along the French Riviera and falling for Prince Rainier of Monocco in the process. In a year, she would bow out of acting altogether, offering High Society (1956) as a swan song before marrying Rainer to become Princess Grace. Hitchcock almost pulled her out of retirement for Marnie (1964), but she ultimately declined. Her legend only grew after a fatal car accident in 1982, where she was killed on roads not so far from those she drove in To Catch a Thief. (A)As for the rest of the cast, Ritter is at her career best, four years after her hilarious quips in All About Eve (1950) and one year after her memorable record-player death in Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953). Ritter may very well be my favorite “character actress” of all time. Watch and you’ll see what I mean. She’s the definition of comic relief.Corey is solid as Lt.
Doyle, the realist counterpoint to Jeff’s suspicions. Did you know that from 1961-1963, he would serve as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Yes, that means he was there when Hitchcock was not even nominated for Best Director for his masterful job on Psycho. Then again, Doyle was always a skeptic.Finally, Raymond Burr is a nasty Mr. Thorwald, shortly before his stardom as TV’s Perry Mason (1957). Unlike the show, Burr is mostly silent for the duration of the film.
It’s rumored Hitchcock chose him because he looked like his former producer, David O. Selznick ( Rebecca), whom Hitchcock thought meddled too much in his work. (B)Neighborly ManifestationsStill, the real stars are the supporting cast of characters that inhabit the Greenwich Village set. We spend just as much time watching these neighbors as we do Stewart, Kelly and Ritter, and we become just as invested in their problems — mostly because we’re jealous of their gorgeous living quarters.The multi-story tenement, set against that orange New York City sky, is a sight to behold. At the time, it was the largest indoor set ever built at Paramount, measuring 98 feet wide, 185 feet long and 40 feet high. Seeing as Stewart’s second-story apartment was actually at ground level, the courtyard required excavation. (B) In total, there were 32 apartments, 12 of which were fully furnished. (F) Joshua Klein writes that “watching it is like watching a living, breathing ecosystem.” (C) Check out this cool timelapse video of the courtyard:This “living, breathing ecosystem” is more than just a marvel of Hollywood set design.
As Jeff spies on his neighbors to break this so-called boredom, we soon learn his spying is not only a perverted pleasure, but also his subconscious way of weighing his marriage decision. Each neighbor is not a random supporting character, but a carefully-chosen representation of a possible future for Jeff.There’s Miss Torso, the hot, flexible ballet dancer, representing the ultimate single life and the object of Jeff’s fantasies. Notice the birds on her roof, foreshadowing the “bird = lady” symbolism that Hitch would later use with taxidermy in Psycho (1960) and flocks of killer peckers in The Birds (1963).There’s Miss Lonelyheart, conversely representing the disaster of single life.There’s a sculptor and songwriter, both representing the starving artist Jeff might become should he continue his photography.
It’s no coincidence that the woman’s sculpture is called “Hunger,” a figure of a man with a giant hole in his stomach.There’s a newlywed couple with the shade constantly drawn, representing the passionate lure of tying the knot and consummating the marriage.There’s an elderly couple who sleeps together out on the fire escape and owns a pet dog, representing the happy family life.Finally, there’s the Thorwalds, representing Jeff’s biggest fear of marital entrapment, a “nagging wife” that pushes her husband over the edge. This is what Jeff sees when he looks out the window. They aren’t merely people; they’re personifications of his own fears and desires.Romantic SubtextIn this way, Hitchcock becomes more than just a master of suspense. He demonstrates that he is highly aware of his film’s romantic core. While most plot summaries claim this is a movie about a man who claims to have seen a murder out his window, it’s really about that man’s relationship with his girlfriend. Despite Stella’s assertion that Lisa is the perfect woman for any sensible man, Jeff cannot seem to appreciate what he has right in front of him: a beautiful woman who wants to marry him.While Lisa offers to adapt to Jeff’s adventurous lifestlye, Jeff shoots back with cynical remarks. “Can’t we just keep things status quo?” he asks, revealing himself as the classic complacent Hitchcock lead, one who mistakenly thinks he’s in control of his life and, like Young Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), begs for something to come along and break his “swamp of boredom.”This is never more present than in the first scene between Jeff and Lisa.
While Lisa enthusiastically discusses her day, watch the way Jeff swishes wine around in his mouth, keeps his eyes low to the ground and the musters only fake smiles (it’s almost comical the way he says, “Ooh, Italian! It’s not the conversation of a man truly interested; it’s one of a man wishing he were someplace else, out of his cast and touring the world again. This idealized life of adventure, and the cause of his distraction from Lisa, is symbolized by Hitchcock’s placement of the sexy Miss Torso in the background while Lisa discusses her day. Note how Jeff can’t take his eyes off her.As soon as Lisa shifts focus to asking Jeff to settle down with her — “Isn’t it time you came home?” — one can bet Hitchcock will symbolically follow, moving the camera so that the newlyweds’ window is now in the background to symbolize the idea of marriage.This is mise-en-scene at its finest, and Jeff, of course, dismisses the idea as “nonsense.” As Lisa prepares dinner in the kitchen, Jeff returns his gaze out the window, focusing on Miss Lonelyheart, whom he toasts with his wine glass. The irony is striking — a real, loving woman is right there in his apartment, yet he’s toasting his glass to another woman, a reminder that if Jeff keeps this up, he may just become a Mr. Lonelyheart.Moments later, the two focus on a song being written by the pianist, which they can hear from across the way.
“It’s almost as if it were being written especially for us,” Lisa says, to which Jeff shoots back, “No wonder he’s having so much trouble with it.” Enter one of Hitchcock’s favorite cuts, going from a two-shot of the man and woman together, to a shot of just the woman, like those of Alicia in Notorious or of Midge in Vertigo.Such a cut brings us inside the woman’s world, showing the extreme emotion of the female, which goes unnoticed by the male. To Jeff, these cocky jabs are merely done for his own psychological release, to make light of a situation that terrifies him.
But with such striking reaction shots, Hitch garners sympathy for the woman.This relationship between Jeff and Lisa is what elevates Rear Window beyond so many other thrillers. Most filmmakers would have been so thrilled to have merely come up with this murder mystery premise that they would have stopped there. Hitchcock, however, worked carefully with screenwriter Hayes to develop the subplot of the relationship. This marriage subplot intertwines brilliantly with the surface mystery plot in a single POV shot of Lisa wearing Jeff’s wedding ring.Note how Jeff changes his expression after Lisa risks her life in Thorwald’s apartment. It’s not until she enters into his fantasy world — this “movie” he’s watching — that his impression of her begins to change.The Master’s Metaphorical FrameIn addition to the romantic core, the elaborate set allows for Hitchcock’s most genius thematic creation — using the frame of the rear window as the frame of a metaphorical movie screen. As Jeff watches this “screen,” he decides which neighbors to watch.
In doing so, he acts as a director would, cutting from one image to the next. Taking the idea even further, each neighbor’s apartment window serves as the frame of an additional movie screen within Jeff’s rear window frame, which is inside Hitchcock’s overall movie frame. In other words, we get a bunch of movies within a movie within a movie, most of them silent, unfolding as pure visual cinema.Hitchcock wastes no time in introducing us to this brilliant concept, showing us this rear window frame during the opening credits. The Film Spectrum began as a labor of love in May 2005, and after years of obsessive research, launched in October 2011. Two months later, The Washington Post praised the site for offering 'lengthy, spirited reviews. With the ethos of a true film aficionado.' The site now serves as a meeting ground for serious critics and casual moviegoers, for I believe academics rarely speak the language of the mainstream, and the mainstream is not yet equipped to digest the academic.
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Yet.Our goal is to help you navigate the two extremes: the pretentious and the ignorant, the engaged and the passive, the elite and the mainstream. Martin Scorsese called it the “eternal battle between personal expression and commercial imperative.' I call it The Film Spectrum.
For more, check out our. About the Author. Jason Fraley holds an M.F.A in Film & Electronic Media from American University and a B.A. In Journalism from the University of Maryland. He has contributed to USA TODAY, The Baltimore Sun and is currently the Film Critic for WTOP Radio, where The Washington Post observed: 'Fraley, a film buff, is known for his savantlike ability to name every Best Picture winner in history, by year.'
Thanks to Baltimore Sun critic Michael Sragow, University of Maryland professor Joseph Miller, AMC Filmsite founder Tim Dirks, former Washington Post critic Desson Thomson and American University professors Larry Engel & Claudia Myers for their guidance in this endeavor. Across the Web.
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