NFR Project: 'Rear Window' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “Rear Window”

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: John Michael Hayes

Pho: Robert Burks

Ed: George Tomasini

Premiere: Sept. 1, 1954

112 min.

First, read here John Belton’s superior analysis of this film at the National Film Registry. I have not much to add! It’s quite comprehensive.

To wit I would only note:

This is another example of Hitchcock’s matchless ability to formulate a conceit and stage it impeccably. Here he takes a screenplay derived from a 1944 Cornell Woolrich short story. Woolrich (1903-1968) was a prolific and talented American crime writer, one of the best of his era. His idea of an idle apartment-dweller believing he sees the commission of a murder across the way is brilliant, and John Michael Hayes’ screenplay adaptation is taut, intelligent, and captivating. It would be the first of four straight Hitchcock films for which Hayes would write the screenplay.

In this case, Hitchcock deliberately traps himself as a filmmaker in the protagonist’s environment. He sets himself visual limitations, then transcends them. It’s an elegant game of a movie.

He doesn’t give himself much to work with. We as the audience are confined to the view of Jeff’s apartment, what’s visible out his back window, and what he sees through binoculars or a telephoto lens. We know only what Jeff knows. We are mercilessly left to draw our own conclusions as the film progresses.

Dashing Greenwich Village photojournalist Jeff Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is recovering from a broken leg that was gotten while filming an auto race. Also, he is grumpy. He is tended by a faithful, acerbic nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his faithful, voluptuous, intelligent, stylish, and beautiful girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly). Bored as hell in recuperation, he gazes out on the courtyard and the surrounding apartments and ruminates on the lives those within.

Lisa wants him to commit. He’s leery of doing so, and complains about women and marriage throughout most of the film. Instead, he operates as a voyeur, which his nurse and Lia comment on and discourage.

Until it seems that someone across the way has murdered his wife. Jeff makes a conjecture as to what happened to Mrs. Thorwald – he sees her nagging her husband (Raymond Burr as the literal heavy), then she seems to disappear.

Jeff sees Thorwald carrying a suitcase out into the rain, three times in one night. Jeff sees him wrap up a saw and a butcher knife. He infers that Mrs. Thorwald is dead, and that Thorwald is the murderer. He alerts his war buddy, a police lieutenant (Wendell Corey). The detective checks out what evidence he can, but he ends up discounting Jeff’s warnings and tells him to lay off.

The suspicions continue to breed. Lisa becomes convinced as well. Jeff lures Thorwald out of the apartment with a phone call, and Lisa breaks in. Thorwald catches her. The police get involved. Thorwald realizes he is being watched by Jeff. Lisa gets arrested. Now Thorwald goes into Jeff’s apartment and confronts him. He advances ominously as Jeff tries to blind him with flashbulbs. Thorwald throws Jeff out of the window, and the cops and Lisa bust in and capture him.

In the coda, Jeff is now propped up with TWO broken legs and Lisa watching over him. He was right.

This is one movie you can have a lot of fun interpreting. Is Thorwald’s brutal killing a literal projection of Jeff’s hidden desires?

Is Jeff “broken” sexually? Does Lisa represent an unreal female ideal? One that’s openly soliciting sex with the hero?

The movie gives us extensive glimpses of the lives of many ordinary citizens, seen through their windows. All varieties of living situations, all ages of life, live on top of each and beside other, their windows opened to Jeff’s observation and judgement (and ours – for we are voyeurs, just like Jeff). It’s an opportunity to comment on the society of the day. Each individual within Jeff’s range of vision is pantomiming their inner lives for us. It is painful and compelling at once.

Stewart is great, having fun playing a “darker” character. Stewart abandoned his good-guy persona after World War II, initially in the Westerns he made with Anthony Mann (you can read my essays on their work together Winchester ’73 [1950] and The Naked Spur [1953] by clicking on the titles). His Jeff Jeffries is, frankly, a pain in the ass. He is bitter and at times abusive. He is sick of being laid up and he takes it out on the women around him. He is not whole. (Stewart would later play some of Hitchcock's most conflicted and tortured heroes.)

Lisa seemingly only becomes real to him when he sees her across the way, trapped in Thorwald’s apartment. His near-death at the hands of Thorwald punishes him for his voyeurism, and now he’s completely immobilized and under the control of his woman. The adventurer is literally disabled, so that he becomes a suitable mate. Jeff is, presumably, tamed.

Even if you don’t read anything into it, it’s still a classic thriller. Is Jeff nuts? Did we see what we thought we saw? The movie puts us on the edge of our seats.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Sabrina.

NFR Project: 'On the Waterfront' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “On the Waterfront”

Dir: Elia Kazan

Scr: Budd Schulberg

Pho: Boris Kaufman

Ed: Gene Milford

Premiere: July 28, 1954

108 min.

"Chère mademoiselle, you have chosen the wrong metteur en scène, because Elia Kazan is a traitor. He is a man who sold to McCarthy all his companions at a time when he could continue to work in New York at high salary, and having sold all his people to McCarthy, he then made a film called On the Waterfront which was a celebration of the informer. I have to add that he is a very good director.” – Orson Welles, 1982

How do you separate the artist from the all-too-human being who inhabits the same body? There are many examples of honored creatives who were hideous people, down to our own time. Elia Kazan is justly revered as one of the great directors. He also ratted out his friends.

How do you praise a movie on the side of a squealer?

In April 1952 Kazan was called on by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was on the hunt for Communist sympathizers in the Second Red Scare. The Cold War was on. People’s loyalties to their country were questioned. If you were tainted with the allegation you were a Red, you lost your job. You were shunned. You were out of luck.

Kazan named eight of his artistic colleagues as Communist sympathizers. He took out an ad in the New York Times justifying his actions. (For the record, screenwriter Budd Shulberg and actor Lee J. Cobb named names as well.) He destroyed many relationships but not, seemingly, his professional opportunities. He was soon making On the Waterfront, a film that does make a hero of an informant. In fact, this is the inverse of John Ford’s 1935 The Informer. Here, betrayal leads to a Christlike redemption.

That being said, Kazan is a masterful director, particularly in his work with actors. He somehow gets them to trust him. He gets physically closer to his people than many directors do; in close-ups and two-shots the story plays out, intimately. He films on location, he keeps it authentic. He frames illuminating, beautiful compositions. He knows how to move the film along, he knows how can he can go.

For this is the offspring of Italy’s Neorealism. It’s American Social Realism, which is also a descendant of the “social problem” and “message” films of the 1930s and 1940s. It’s a story from the streets. It’s gritty. It poses a problem, delineates its outlines. It tracks the progress of a noble young man who decides to do what is unpopular but right.

This directing style was receptive to the advances of the Method approach in acting, which called for the summoning of sense memory and emotional truth to embody a character. This revolutionary system, derived from the work of Russian great Constantin Stanislavsky and his American disciple Lee Strasberg, meant that people were emoting and pondering onscreen, looking for something “real” to enact. Kazan’s troupe was the vanguard of the Method’s inroads into the film acting approach of American performers. It feels real.

The script’s skeleton was constructed by famous playwright Arthur Miller, who wrote the first version of the script. The studio wanted him to make the corrupt union members who play the villains into Communists. Miller declined. In fact, Miller was so pissed off at Kazan that he bailed. He was replaced by Budd Schulberg. The end result is a taut yet insightful look at the underside of racketeering in America.

It’s taken as a given. Corruption riddles the industry. Goons run the union and exploit their workers. They kill people who threaten to rat them out.

Kazan got the best for his cast. Marlon Brando is still astonishing as Terry Molloy, the conscience-stricken longshoreman who used to be a “contender,” a prizefighter with possibilities who threw a fight for his brother, corrupt union hireling Charley the Gent (Rod Steiger) and ruined his career. He’s privy to the union officials’ execution of a potential government witness, Joey Doyle.

Brando is at the top of his game – he’s fully alive in every scene, he’s spontaneous, he’s irresistible. He won the Best Actor Oscar for this performance – back when he was still accepting them.

Steiger is amazing as Terry’s savvy older brother, and their interplay, especially in their iconic taxi scene, is intense. Eva Marie Saint won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this, her first film, as Joey’s sister Edie. Karl Malden is equally brilliant as the waterfront priest. Lee J. Cobb is the classic bad man, “Johnny Friendly,” who dominates and makes his money off the labor of his union members. BOOO!

Terry is drawn to Edie, who’s out to find the killer of her brother. She and Terry fall in love with each other, but when he confesses his role to her, she runs away from him.

Charley has to convince Terry to take a job with the organization – or he has to take him to his death. Terry refuses. Charley gives him a gun and tells him to run. Charley is murdered. 

Terry testifies. He later goes to the docks and exclaims that he was glad he testified, and calls Johnny out. The two battle, then Friendly’s goons rush in and almost beat Terry to death. The dockworkers won’t go to work unless Terry leads them. He struggles painfully to his feet and enters the warehouse. They follow. The warehouse door swings down.

It’s classic, and deeply moving. It features an excellent score by Leonard Bernstein. It won Best Picture. It won Best Director. It won for Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Editing. It features a lot of soon-to-be-known actors. There ‘s Martin Balsam! There’s Pat Hingle! There’s Fred Gwynne! There’s Nehemiah Persoff!

It’s a fascinating, compelling film. The performances are legendary.

Kazan won a honorary Oscar in 1999. Many present there sat on their hands rather than applaud his achievement.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Rear Window.

NFR Project: 'Johnny Guitar' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “Johnny Guitar”

Dir: Nicholas Ray

Scr: Philip Yordan, Den Maddow

Pho: Harry Stradling

Ed: Richard L. Van Enger

Premiere: May 5, 1954

110 min.

Should you be wary of a Western loved by French film critics?

Both Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut praised this film when it came out. It is a peculiar genre film, one that plays with the hallmarks of the type, turning them inside out and upside down. It is another remarkably idiosyncratic film by Nicholas Ray, who specialized in making movies his own particular way.

The film features two strong female leads, a real departure for the Western. Joan Crawford plays Vienna, a former prostitute who now owns a saloon and gambling house near a small Arizona frontier town. She forgoes frills and lace, and dresses like a man – and a gunfighter at that. Her stern, unmoving features make her a tight-jawed, thin-lipped protagonist.

She supports the incursion of the railroad to the area, setting her against the sentiments of the local cattle ranchers and the sheriff, led by McIvers (Ward Bond). In particular opposition to Vienna is Emma Small (Mercedes McCambriddge), who wants her dead and her saloon destroyed. Into this situation rides Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a former gunfighter and former lover of Vienna. Bittersweet is their reunion, but he decides to help her out.

Emma blames Vienna’s current lover, the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), for a stagecoach robbery that resulted in the death of her brother. (Supposedly, Emma resents the Kid’s relationship with Vienna as well.) Finally, the townfolk give Vienna, and the Kid and his gang, 24 hours to get out of town.

Vienna goes to the bank to withdraw all her money the next day, planning to leave. The Kid and his gang, frustrated, angry, and broke, rob the town bank while Vienna is there. An enraged Emma, fresh from her brother’s funeral, blames Vienna and leads a posse of men dressed in mourning clothes to kill Vienna, Johnny, and the Kid and his gang. They capture one of the Kid’s men and hang him, and almost hang Vienna, who is saved by Johnny. Emma and her men burn down Vienna’s place.

By hook and crook, the posse finds the gang’s hideout behind a waterfall. They attack, and most of the gang is killed. Emma herself guns down the Kid. Vienna kills Emma. She and Johnny leave town.

Placing women in leading roles subverts the usual horse-opera dynamics. Vienna stands for integrity and reason; Emma is a vengeful Fury, out to destroy anyone who stands in her way. Later film critics have outlined the film’s lesbian subtext – Vienna is a butch hero and Emma, sexually frustrated by her inability to accept her own attraction to Vienna, wants to blot out the object of her affection.

The film sports many of the hallmark names of Western film – Ernest Borgnine, Royal Dano, John Carradine, Denver Pyle, and Sheb Wooley. The shifting psychosexual terrain makes this an oddball kind of feature, one in which the passions and actions are in the purview of the ladies.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: On the Waterfront.