REAR WINDOW

REAR WINDOW

Sponsored by MARIN ACURA

1954 112 min

One of Alfred Hitchcock's most perfect films remains one of our favorites, now restored in all its Technicolor glory by Robert Harris and James Katz, the team that restored Vertigo a year earlier. The Master's meditation on voyeurism and culpability is also ripping good entertainment and has you on the edge of your seat, no matter how many times you've seen the film before.

Photojournalist LB Jeffries (James Stewart) is laid up in his New York apartment with a broken leg on the hottest week of the summer. With nothing to do but look out the window at his neighbors, he begins to suspect that the goings-on in one apartment across the way may be nothing short of murder.

Stewart's wonderful layered performance is supported by one of Hitch's favorite blondes, Grace Kelly, never looking more radiant, and never more game, as she climbs over fire escapes and plays at breaking and entering to prove to Jeff that she's a fit companion for an adventuring snapshooter. Wendell Corey is fittingly sarcastic as a stock Hitchcock character, the cop who doesn't believe anything's amiss. But it's Thelma Ritter as Stella, Jeff's caregiver, who gives voice to the trademark Hitchcock wicked humor and makes John Michael Hayes' screenplay (an adaptation of a short story by Cornell Woolrich) sparkle. One of these days, we'll have to do a tribute to Thelma Ritter, this wonderful character actress who has given so many films the pinch they need to bring them to life. In Rear Window, she definitely gets the best lines! Also wonderful in the film is Raymond Burr as Thorwald, in a performance full of nuance, most of which is filmed at a distance or in shadow, making his job as an actor much harder.

A word is due here about John Michael Hayes, a great screenwriter whose name is not known by enough people. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, after writing for such radio shows as "The Inner Sanctum," he wrote a wide variety of genres of screenplays, with a particular expertise in doing adaptations from other media such as stage and literature. Hitchcock had a particularly successful collaboration with him during the Paramount years (they worked together on The Trouble with Harry, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and The Man Who Knew Too Much), but Hayes also adapted Peyton Place, The Carpetbaggers, Butterfield 8, The Children's Hour, and The Chalk Garden for the movies, among others. Hayes ended his career doing what he loved best, teaching screenwriting at Dartmouth College.

Rear Window required one of the largest sets ever built on the Paramount lot. Many of the apartments that Jeffries could see across the way were fully plumbed and could actually be lived in. Actual masonry was combined with fake masonry seamlessly so that the structures would be solid enough to hold the actors and remain standing reliably.

A couple of other interesting trivia notes: there were over 80 music cues representing the music that echoes through the courtyard. Besides Franz Waxman's score (and two other recent film scores of his, which he cannibalized pieces of), there are snippets of Leonard Bernstein's ballet score "Fancy Free," and Friedrich von Flotow's "Martha." A year after Rear Window came out, a collective of Cantonese actors in Hong Kong remade the film to memorialize actor Yi Qiushui. Most of the actors who played the occupants of the apartments across the way (other than Raymond Burr) did little other acting in their careers, but a couple are noteworthy. Georgine Darcy, who played "Miss Torso," the ballet dancer Jeff can't take his eyes off of, went on to star in a sixties TV series called "Harrigan and Son." She recently came to San Rafael to make an appearance when Rear Window was restored. The man who played the soldier who, in the end, had her heart, was Benny Bartlett. He had a long career in the movies, almost exclusively playing characters named Butch (I kid you not). Judith Evelyn, who is terrific as Miss Lonelyhearts, you might recognize as Mrs. Lynnton (Doc Lynnton's wife) in Giant. She was also in that great William Castle scare classic, The Tingler. Irene Winston, who plays the ill-fated Mrs. Thorwald ("I don't want any part of her!" says Stella at the end of the movie), was not much of an actress at all. In fact, she was one of the main staff writers on the popular James Garner series, "Maverick." And last but not least, Ross Bagdasarian, who plays the composer, throwing his parties, playing that lovely tune at the piano, which beguiles both Miss Lonelyhearts and Grace Kelly, and fills the movie with its romantic theme, and whom we never hear speak, is the cousin of writer William Saroyan and is in actuality the famed Liberty Records recording star David Seville, creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks!

Trivia aside, Rear Window remains a near-perfect balance of suspense, humor, great acting, and terrific filmmaking magic. Unlike so many movies of this genre, it's about something: it raises an issue that sticks in the audience's mind long after they leave the theater. "I'm not much on rear window ethics," Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) says at one point, after Jeff has asked her if she thinks it's ethical to spy on people. But the question, relevant in 1954, comes back to haunt us today, in our media-crazed society. How much right do we have to watch each other? Jeff had a 35mm camera with a telephoto lens. Now we have miniature video cameras, satellites, the Internet. We have photographers and paparazzi destroying the personal lives of our celebrity royalty, sometimes even putting them or their families at risk, all so that we can sneak a peek. Perhaps Rear Window's popularity is evergreen not only because of its entertainment value, but because its subject is more important now than ever. So when the point in the movie comes when James Stewart points that big long lens at you, maybe you'd better duck.

By Kenn Rabin

Fact: Alfred Hitchcock started his movie career in Europe (Germany and England), but he always wanted to make movies in America. It was David O. Selznick, the great Hollywood producer of GONE WITH THE WIND, who would bring Hitchcock to America. Unfortunately the two filmmakers did not see eye to eye and Hitchcock grew to despise David O. Selznick (there is a great PBS Documentary on the subject called HITCHCOCK, SELZNICK AND THE END OF HOLLYWOOD). Later, when he had finished his contract with Selznick, Hitchcock began putting subtle homage's to his old boss in his new films. One of the most obvious ones is the resemblance of Raymond Burr as the wife killer in REAR WINDOW to the real life David O. Selznick.

Another is seen in NORTH BY NORTHWEST in a scene on the train when Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marine Saint). He begins lighting a match when Eve asks about his pack of matches. They have the monogram ROT with an unusually large "O", David O. Selznick?