Screenshot for a Fortnight: "REAR WINDOW" (1954) (01 March to 14 March 2021)

James Stewart in Rear Window (1954)

[SPOILER ALERT!] A man who makes his living closely observing the world as a photographer finds himself wheelchair-bound in his apartment with nothing better to keep boredom away than voyeurism.  With his windows and blinds open, he trains his eyes and ears on the world of his neighbors—the composer, the couple with the dog, Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Torso, the salesman and his wife, the artist, and the newlyweds.  What he sees and hears leads him to conclude that one of those neighbors is a murderer. [END SPOILER ALERT]

Grace Kelly

Wendell Corey

Kelly and Stewart

Thelma Ritter and Stewart

 

Rear Window (1954) is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich entitled "It Had to Be Murder," which in turn is based on an H.G. Wells story, "Through a Window."  

Woolrich was a prolific noir fiction writer, publishing dozens of novels and hundreds of stories during his long career.  He garnered early success in his hometown of New York writing and publishing six jazz age novels between 1926 and 1932.  After winning a $10,000 writing contest sponsored by First National Pictures he abruptly took a job at First National in Hollywood writing screenplays, or trying to write them.  Within two years he returned to New York and began to write pulp noir fiction.

Despite accumulating wealth as a writer, he lived with his mother for 25 years in a series of seedy hotels, mingling with prostitutes, thieves, killers, and other lowlifes.  From the time of his mother's death in 1957 until his own death in 1968, however, he lived in more civilized lodgings on the upper west side and mingled with his colleagues and young admirers in the unofficial New York hangouts of the Mystery Writers of America.

Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart formed a partnership in 1953 and bought the rights to "It Had to Be Murder" to make this film.

🌎  🌎  🌎

John Michael Hayes was Alfred Hitchcock's favorite screenwriter, until he wasn't.  Rear Window was their first film together.

The Woolrich story has no romantic subplot, and Jeff's disability isn't revealed until the last paragraph.  Hayes made these two storylines prominent in his screenplay.

He also took this dialogue from "It Had to Be Murder"—  

Did any of them see her leave, according to your man? …  Then all you've gotten is a second-hand version of an unsupported statement by him.  Not an eyewitness account.

—and turned it into this:

Well, what good's his information?  It's a second-hand version of an unsupported story by the murderer himself—Thorwald.  Now, did anybody actually see the wife get on the train?

He took the insipid character of Sam in Woolrich's story and created a funny and insightful replacement, Stella, the insurance company nurse.  He then split the sounding-board duties between Stella and Jeff's romantic partner played by Grace Kelly.

Hayes continued his successful collaboration with Hitchcock on To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).  But something fell apart between them after Hayes had written The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Hitchcock decided to leave Hayes's name off the credits and give another writer, Angus MacPhail—who had contributed some minor help early on—full credit for the screenplay.  Hayes took Hitchcock to arbitration, won his case, and his name replaced MacPhail's as the sole screenwriter.  Thus Hayes's relationship with Alfred Hitchcock came to a bitter end.

🌎  🌎  🌎 

Rear Window was one of the "Five Lost Hitchcocks," so-called, because after their theatrical releases the director bought back each movie's rights.  For three decades the films were tied up, first by Hitchcockian fiat and then, after his death, by litigation over re-distribution rights.  The other four films were Rope (1948), The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958).  They all became available for re-distribution in 1984.

🌎  🌎  🌎

The film was shot on an enormous set at Paramount Pictures built specially for Rear Window.  It took fifty workers two months to build it at a cost of $100,000 ($2.2 million in 2023).  It was four stories high and contained thirty-one apartments, including twelve that were fully furnished.  Georgine Darcy—"Miss Torso"—lived in her character's apartment during the filming.

The courtyard was constructed in what had been the studio basement before a crew excavated and prepped it for this movie.  Jeff's second-story apartment was actually on street level in the real world.

The set was a legend in its own time and was the object of an unusually high number of visitors to a Hitchcock set as well as the object of photo spreads in several magazines, including LIFE, while the movie was being shot.  Hitchcock kept his base of operations inside Jeff's apartment throughout the filming, and he communicated with the actors in the other apartments via radio-frequency transmission to earpieces they wore.

🌎  🌎  🌎

Rear Window was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, and Sound.  It ranks at number 48 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Greatest Films, number 53 on the British Film Institute's 2012 list of the 100 Greatest Films, and number 8 on My 25 Favorite Movies list.  Current imdb fans rank #58/250

Screenshot for the Week of 17 August 2020: "TO CATCH A THIEF" (1955)

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955)

Alfred Hitchcock had his "A" team on this movie—his favorite actor, Cary Grant; favorite actress, Grace Kelly; favorite assistant director/second-unit director, Herb Coleman; favorite screenwriter, John Michael Hayes; favorite cinematographer, Robert Burks; favorite film editor, George Tomasini; favorite costume designer, Edith Head; plus the best process photographer in the business, Farciot Edouart, shooting French Riviera rear-projection film for Grace Kelly's driving scenes.  So why is To Catch a Thief only a so-so movie?

Why?  Because unlike Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much, nothing has been added to the plot of To Catch a Thief to make resolution of the mystery urgent.  And so the movie is in no hurry.

[SPOILER ALERT] In Rear Window, Jeff and his deputies Lisa and Stella have to investigate and solve the crime before Thorwald flees the city, which could happen at any time.  There's a real sense of urgency.  And in The Man Who Knew Too Much, what could be more urgent than stopping the assassination of a prime minister and rescuing a kidnapped child? [End SPOILER ALERT]

💎💎💎

(More to come.)

C: Robert Burks.  D: Alfred Hitchcock.

Screenshot for the Week of 05 July 2020: "HIGH NOON" (1952)

Gary Cooper as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (1952)

The Year 1952 was rife with paradox, irony, and fear in the movie industry.  That year yielded seven great films, none of which won the Oscar for Best Picture.  It was the year of High Noon; The Bad and the Beautiful; Viva Zapata!; The Quiet Man; Come Back, Little Sheba; Forbidden Games; and Singin' in the Rain.  The Oscar for Best Picture of 1952 went to a good but not great film, The Greatest Show on Earth.

Carl Foreman's script for High Noon is a classic.  It was nominated for an Oscar but lost to The Bad and the Beautiful.  I think Foreman's script was better, but the loss wasn't a miscarriage of justice.  After all, The Bad and the Beautiful won 5 Oscars, more than any other film that year.

🌎🌎🌎

High Noon is an allegory for the "red scare" in postwar America and for the way Hollywood—actors, producers, writers, directors, studio bosses—failed to rise up, stand united, and protect their own in the face of Congressional bullying.  In trying to find and root out Communists and Communist influence in Hollywood, the House Committee on Un-American Activities menaced witnesses who did not unabashedly and unhesitatingly cooperate and "name names"—i. e., expose members of the film industry that had even a remote connection to Communism.

If it were discovered that you had taken a leaflet from someone on the street that turned out to be Communist propaganda—even if you had immediately shoved it into your pocket without looking at it and thrown it away when you got home—you would be labeled a suspected Communist or Communist sympathizer.  If you had eaten a meal one time in a restaurant that was later identified as a Communist hangout; if a distant relative had been labeled a Communist or sympathizer; if you had gone to a party where Communists or sympathizers had been present, you would be labeled a suspected Communist or Communist sympathizer.  In or out of Hollywood you would lose your job.  Friends and colleagues would shun and avoid you.

The film industry was complicit in the bullying by way of its off-the-record "blacklist."  The "Hollywood Blacklist" was a poorly-kept secret that, for decades, Hollywood insiders denied ever existed.  But too many memoirs and first-person accounts of the blacklist have put that canard in its grave.  Indeed there was a blacklist and it was enforced.

It was the age of widespread fear.  It was the age of the second "red scare" of the 20th century.  It was the age of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Whitaker Chambers, the "atom bomb" and the soul-killing fear of "World War III."  It was the age of Joseph R. McCarthy, his henchman Roy Cohn, and Congressman Richard Nixon.  Few dared to stand up to the bullying.  Carl Foreman was one who did, and in return he was blacklisted from working in Hollywood.  But before he was blacklisted, he wrote High Noon.

🌎🌎🌎

Floyd Crosby (father of rocker David Crosby [The Byrds; Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young]) was the Director of Photography on this film.  What's the difference between a cinematographer and a director of photography?  Answer: the level of artistic control over the cinematography.

The high-contrast black-and-white of High Noon was conceived and executed by Crosby and makes the visual imagery as stark as the story and action.  Director Fred Zinnemann had a vivid mental storyboard of how the action should play out.  His firm grasp on his subject no doubt helped Crosby tremendously.  If only ….  If only High Noon had been Crosby's lone film credit, he might have been considered among the world's greatest cinematographers.  Alas, it wasn't and he isn't.

Crosby's resume is unimpressive.  And thus his credit for High Noon stands out as if it were in all caps or red letters.  His work on that film is the work of a true artist at the top of his game.  I spent the time to take screenshots of High Noon from start to finish, following Crosby around, shooting what he shot.  I ended up taking only 57, but nearly every one is perfectly framed.  Here are a few examples.

🌎🌎🌎

Gary Cooper was a lifelong conservative Republican.  I don't know whether he hesitated in taking the role of Will Kane and whether the hesitation, if it happened, was political.  But Fred Zinnemann's first choice—Gregory Peck—turned the role down and it was then offered to Cooper.  His popularity had dropped in the previous seven or eight years.  Perhaps he saw this as a comeback opportunity.  It most certainly was.

Many critics and, doubtless, many filmgoers were disturbed by the age gap between Cooper and Grace Kelly.  Cooper was 51 and Kelly was 21.  Cooper and Kelly had no problem with it.  In fact they carried on an affair during the entirety of the filming.

🌎🌎🌎

Some blacklisted writers continued to work in Hollywood off-the-record, literally.  Their screen credits were given over to fake names.  At least four of their screenplays won Oscars: Roman Holiday (1953), written by Dalton Trumbo; The Brave One (1956), also by Trumbo; The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), co-written by Carl Foreman and another blacklisted writer, Michael Wilson; and The Defiant Ones (1958), co-written by Nedrick Young.  Decades later, they finally received their credits when their real names were restored to the films and to the official records.

🌎🌎🌎

High Noon director Fred Zinnemann's next movie was From Here to Eternity (1953).  It won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1953 and he won an Oscar for his direction.

DoP: Floyd Crosby.  D: Fred Zinnemann.