Hitchcock's Rear Window

With Oscar night right around the corner, movies have been on my mind, and last week I happened upon a particular episode of the fabulous podcast Filmspotting, in which co-hosts Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen pitted Hitchcock’s 1954 Rear Window against his 1958 film, Vertigo. The former has long been in my top three movies of all-time (along with Avalon and Cinema Paradiso), and after watching it last spring for maybe the 20th time, I determined that it was conclusively my favorite film. I was curious to see where Adam and Josh would land on these two films, especially given that Vertigo has long been touted as one of the top two or three movies of all-time on many lists. I needn’t have worried. A few minutes in, I learned that Josh’s default answer for his favorite film has been Rear Window for quite a while.

Not that I needed the validation. I first saw the film at summer camp in Madison, Wisconsin, between my sophomore and junior years of high school, where my fellow music nerds and I would gather in the cafeteria at night to watch movies. Rear Window and Psycho were on the docket that summer, and from that point on, I was all in. For the next half a decade or so it was all Hitchcock, all the time. I rented every movie I could find (oddly, the nearby Sentry grocery store had virtually all of Hitchcock’s 1950s films available for rental on VHS), borrowed several books from the local library (eventually purchasing the wonderful book of filmmaker François Truffaut’s interviews of Hitchcock), and eventually used my newfound knowledge to write a paper for Mrs. Kossoris’s senior English composition class. I was kind of a Hitchcock bully for a while, subjecting many friends to a movie rental night of a subpar film (Topaz and Torn Curtain come to mind) after likely forcing the critical decision at the video rental store.

My enthusiasm for Hitchcock films has been tempered only somewhat since my teenage years, mostly because I started with the best. Rear Window was the first one I saw, and it is indeed his masterpiece. Others have been a hell of a lot of fun: The Lady Vanishes, Lifeboat, Notorious, North by Northwest, Psycho – but nothing rises to the same level of Rear Window, not even Vertigo. That film is wonderful for its creepiness, its pacing, its dreamlike atmosphere and swirling score, not to mention the superb acting of Jimmy Stewart yet again, but there are more holes in Vertigo’s plot than there are in a Chinese checkers board. Suspension of disbelief is sometimes required when watching film, and I love Vertigo, but I never finish the movie feeling entirely satisfied, similar to how I feel after purchasing a new car and wondering if I’ve been taken by the sales guy.

With Rear Window, the only lingering feelings are those of pure delight. When I first viewed the film in 1984, I was positively captivated by Grace Kelly, enthralled with the comedic banter between her, Stewart and the amazing Thelma Ritter, and stressed out beyond belief at the film’s climax. Unfortunately, suspense can’t really be easily duplicated after multiple viewings, and though I may no longer fear for Lisa Fremont’s life when she’s caught in Lars Thorwald’s apartment, Hitchcock’s deft direction and the smart dialogue of screenwriter John Michael Hayes keeps this movie from getting stale even after several viewings. Hayes may not be a household name – I had to look it up for this blog – but he hit the ball out of the park on this one, not just for its entertainment value, but for its larger themes of voyeurism, isolation, loneliness, and what it means to be a neighbor, issues that sadly feel as on-point today as they likely did in 1954.

Other films I’ve seen have knocked me off my feet for a variety of reasons: Broadcast News, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Goodfellas, Beginners, High Fidelity, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Witness for the Prosecution, The Big Short, Charade, Parasite, Holiday, Amadeus, Schindler’s List, Elf, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Searching for Sugarman, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Get Out, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Roman Holiday, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, I Tonya, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wall*E, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tar, Finding Nemo, Fiddler on the Roof, Long Shot, Michael Clayton, Magnolia, The Great Escape, It’s a Wonderful Life, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense…

But if I had only one film to live with for the rest of my life (not counting trilogies and the like), Rear Window is tops for me.

Now, onto the 2024 Oscars!

The Phrase "Spoiler Alert."

The invention of the phrase “spoiler alert” has got to be one Man’s greatest linguistic contributions over the last decade or so.  Philip B. Corbet of The New York Times has rightly pointed out how overused the phrase has become, and how it’s often used incorrectly, but for my money, overuse is preferable to the alternative.

I think of the woman who came to my home in 2002, and who – after eating our food – thanked us by divulging the ending of the movie, The Others.

I will do for you what she didn’t do for me.

!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!

She opened up that pouty little mouth of hers and spewed out, “I couldn’t believe it when I learned her children were dead.”

She is very, very lucky that I didn’t resort to the following (or worse): 

After her egregious case of vomit of the mouth, it didn’t matter to me if she was smart or pretty, if she’d overcome obstacles in her life or helped the needy.  I couldn’t possibly care less if she gave twenty percent of her earnings to charity or if she was raising three perfect little angels.  None of that shit mattered to me.  What mattered is she opened her mouth and ruined the ending of a movie I was excited to see.  Yeah, the film had already left theaters and moved into video stores, but to me, there is no statute of limitations when it comes to revealing secrets about a piece of art.

I still haven’t told my kids about the ending of Psycho.  I’ll never divulge the meaning of Rosebud, whether or not Thorwald really murders his wife, and where the quarter of a million dollars is hidden in the movie Charade.  That’s for them to discover.  And I sure as heck won’t mention a word about The Sixth Sense.  Sure, I could try to ease my kids’ anxiety and mention !!!SPOILER ALERT!!! that the ghosts are actually trying to help, that they’re good guys (never mind the movie’s Big Secret).  I resorted to this tactic when my kids were younger watching E.T. for the first time.  !!!SPOILER ALERT!!! “The bad guys are actually good guys,” I said, attempting to alleviate their trepidation, but I’ll never do this again.  It kills the journey.

Some people just don’t get it, including – unfortunately – much of my family.  Last summer my sister-in-law blurted out the secret behind the musical, Next to Normal, the same day my daughter was to see it.  And just last month, my mother, in response to an email of mine indicating that I wanted to see the movie Enough Said, wrote the following email !!!SPOILER ALERT!!!:

I fell in love with the Soprano guy, what an appealing person.  Was Julia's character vulnerable, screwed up, or just terribly unkind?

Yep.  So now I know the ending of that movie, too.  Thanks, Mom.

I think when it comes to discussing books, films and theater, we could look to my sister for guidance.  Her advice for living in a world in which the excretion of opinions is as commonplace as breathing is this:

Shut your trap.