The Favorites - Rear Window (#66)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Rear Window (1954/USA/dir. Alfred Hitchcock) appeared at #66 on my original list.

What it is • L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is a globe-trotting photographer at home in exotic locales ranging from remote wilderness to combat zone. In the skies over Europe or the Pacific in World War II, he befriended co-pilot Thomas Doyle (Wendell Corey), now a police detective in New York City. Jeffries is in New York too, recovering after an accident on a car race track which broke his leg (but the picture was worth it). Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly), a lovely high society girl, flits from social event to social event on Park or Fifth Avenue, but her heart is in humble Greenwich Village with Jeffries, whom she hopes to marry (he's resistant both to accepting and breaking off their relationship, preferring the non-commital status quo). Meanwhile, the man who lives across the courtyard from Jeffries, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) has sent a woman off to the countryside - perhaps to Connecticut or Long Island, and perhaps she's his wife...or his mistress. But if it's his mistress, where is his wife? Buried somewhere else? Stashed away in the apartment? Ghoulishly scattered across the city and in the East River? (I just now got Thelma Ritter's "I want no part of it" pun for the first time.) Our story of adventure, romance, and murder spans all of these various locations...

Except it doesn't. Rear Window takes place entirely within a single apartment (save for a few one- or two-second shots in the courtyard). Even when we look into other rooms we are doing so from Jeffries' vantage point. This is the brilliance of Rear Window: it locks itself down to one location despite its multiplicity.

Why I like it •

Side by Side: Rear Window and Dial M For Murder (video)

Update 12/1: The video is finally up!

Adapted from my review Rear Window (& thoughts on Dial M For Murder). The previous entry in the Side by Side series covered the TV shows Neon Genesis Evangelion & Twin Peaks.

The Vimeo upload appears after the jump, along with the original message.

Rear Window (& thoughts on Dial M for Murder)

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

Rear Window is a dazzling film, because it's so many things: an entertaining narrative, an enjoyable hang-out film, a beautiful visual experience, a provocative concept, and a clever contraption. This is Hitchcock firing on all cylinders, finding a gimmick (as he loved to do) that opened opportunities rather than constricting options (which was not always the case). It's a movie that has been written about thousands of times, approached from many angles: as a metaphor for the characters' anxieties about marriage, as a clever exploration of voyeurism, and as a meta meditation on film-going (and channel-surfing, in this new age of television). That last aspect particularly interests me, and there's definitely something to it. As James Stewart's L.B. Jeffries looks out over his courtyard, each window is like a separate screen, offering different viewing options in various genres: comedy, romance, musical, and eventually the one that consumes his attention - murder mystery.

The Restless Fifties 1953 - 1955 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 10

The tenth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films. 
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 10: The Restless Fifties"

The Restless Fifties

Far from being a tepid, sedate period as is sometimes suggested, the fifties were full of dynamic energy. What distinguished the decade from the following one was the difficulties these energies faced in finding expression. You could see them in advertisements, magazine layouts, in widescreen movies (making their first appearance today) and live television, and especially the emergence of teen culture and rock 'n' roll. Yet somehow there seemed to be a deeper restlessness and rootlessness there, something left over from the war that couldn't quite fully flower.