I was watching a dvd of Rear Window with Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart (one of the oddest pairings for an audience to buy as a romantic couple, by the way… Grace Kelly would dump the old man after seeing him without a shirt on for the first time… but I digress).
Anyway, at the very beginning of the movie, there is a very strange shot that I never really thought about or noticed until tonight. As they are panning around the courtyard, there are two people (I presume women) sunbathing on one of the rooftops. We never see the women, just their arms, throwing their shirts on the side of the roof. Then, out of nowhere, a helicopter comes flying into the picture and sort of hovers over the spot where I assume the women are.
Has anyone seen this, and do you have any idea why it was left in the movie? A great film with a small snippet of weird is fine, but this just doesn’t work in the movie at all.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has seen the movie and knows what I’m referring to, or has heard an explanation of the scene in question.
It’s a pretty simple joke: the women are sunbathing topless, where they didn’t expect anyone could see them — until a helicopter hovers over. Likewise, the young newlywed man who comes out pajama-clad on the balcony of his apartment only to be drawn back inside by his wife for presumably another round of sex.
There’s a New Yorker (or New Yorker-style) cartoon that may or may not predate the movie, depicting a matronly type clutching a towel to her top as she phones from her penthouse “lawn”. The caption reads “I want to report a helicopter.”
Agreed, but the movie is not just about voyeurism, it’s about sex (and marriage.)
Thelma Ritter calls Jimmy Stewart a “window-shopper”: he only watches variations on sexual relationships (male/female, since it was the 50s) and the loneliness of not having sexual relations (Miss Lonelihearts, couple with dog.) We the audience also have brief glimpse of a happily married couple (with a child, p IIRC?), but Stewart shows no interest in them.
So, it’s not just voyeurism, not just peeping on any old thing, but the helicopter is watching naked women. Very VERY apropros, and a typical Hitchcock joke, fit perfectly into the thematic content.
Interesting – the IMDb entry indicates that this movie is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich – who wrote “It Had To Be Murder”/“Rear Window”, upon which Hitchcock based his film. It doesn’t say which story it’s based on though. (If it was the same one Hitchcock used, then they changed it significantly – Hitchcock made some changes, but kept pretty close to the story).
When Francois Truffaut made The Bride Wore Black, his homage Hitchcock, he based it on another Woolrich story (and got Bernard Herrman, who scored Psycho and North by Northwest, to do the music.)
I haven’t read the Woolrich, but the film is a tight and suspenseful little “Boy Who Cried Wolf” piece–kinda if the Hitchcock mated with The Fallen Idol (though not as artful as either).
For me the strongest (though hardly the only) aspect of Rear Window is that it feels like a love letter to silent film: each of the little instances mentioned upthread–and countless others–is a little snippet of story told purely visually, without dialog. Little silent films. That coupled with the movie-screen framing supplied by the shape of each window Stewart peers into, and his back yard is like one of those media-mogul TV walls, only with silent films.
This was my initial thought… so the joke didn’t go over my head. The only thing that struck me odd about it was that it was the only time the sunbathers were seen and the helicopter was seen. Everything and everyone else in the courtyard is shown numerous times, so the audience is aware of just about everything else at some level. Including the newlywed couple that has the window shades drawn for most of the movie.
And for those of you that were wondering about the other version of Rear Window I mentioned, it was answered upthread. The one I was thinking of was the version starring Christopher Reeve, which had the same title.
I think Steve Guttenberg (the guy from Police Academy) starred in something similar to Rear Window in the early 80’s. He saw a murder from his apartment… maybe called “The Bedroom Window”.
This is the most disturbing thing I’ve read all day… besides seeing the user name “Anal Scurvy”. :eek: :dubious:
They were over 19 years apart in age IRL, and it looked even worse on the screen. this was a romantic pair that just never worked for me. Especially since GK was the one chasing JS, not the other way around. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great movie and this defect doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of the picture, but outside of GK and JS, the casting was impeccable. I think it would have been perfect if they dumped JS for a younger star of the era. Grace Kelly is perfect in her role, so in my opinion, Jimmy would have to go.
Stars of that era usually played younger than their age, especially in romantic roles, with no one complaining. Cary Grant could get Audrey Hepburn in Charade, for instance.
Hitchcock choose Stewart because of his image as a decent and principled everyman. I doubt there was a younger star of the era that could project that image.
BTW, I did read the Cornell Woolrich story that the movie was based on. The voyeurism theme wasn’t there, and the payoff was different. It also wasn’t quite as suspenseful – just a puzzle: the protagonist thinks the guy across the way has committed a murder and has to figure out how to prove it.
