Rear Window (1954) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron find out why sometimes it feels like somebodies watching you as they discuss “Rear Window.”

Picture Title: Rear Window (1954)

Written by: John Michael Hayes

Based on the short story by Cornell Woolrich

Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

Director Cameo: Winding the clock in the songwriter’s apartment. The songwriter is Ross Bagdasarian, creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The original story by Cornell Woolrich had no love story and no additional neighbors for L.B. Jefferies to spy on; those elements were created by Sir Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes. Hayes was encouraged by Hitchcock to spend time with Grace Kelly before writing the Lisa character, and Hayes admitted that elements of Lisa were inspired by the actress.

Alfred Hitchcock noted that the 1910 case of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen also served as an inspiration for this movie. Crippen, an American living in London, poisoned his wife and cut up her body, then told police that she had moved to Los Angeles. Crippen was eventually caught after his secretary, with whom he was having an affair, was seen wearing Mrs. Crippen’s jewelry, and a family friend searched unsuccessfully for Mrs. Crippen in California. After Scotland Yard became involved, Crippen and his mistress fled England under false names and were apprehended on an ocean liner. Police found parts of Mrs. Crippen’s body in her cellar.

This movie was also inspired in part by the real-life murder case of Patrick Mahon. In 1924, in Sussex, England, Mahon murdered his pregnant mistress, Emily Kaye, and dismembered her body. Alfred Hitchcock claimed that Mahon threw the body parts out of a train window piece by piece, and burned the head in his fireplace. Another modern source, however, states that Mahon quartered the body and stored it in a large trunk, then removed internal organs, putting some in biscuit tins and a hatbox and boiling others on the stove.

The entire movie was shot on one set, which required months of planning and construction. The apartment-courtyard set measured ninety-eight feet wide, one hundred eighty-five feet long, and forty feet high, and consisted of thirty-one apartments, eight of which were completely furnished. The courtyard was set twenty to thirty feet below stage level, and some of the buildings were the equivalent of five or six stories high.

One thousand arc lights were used to simulate sunlight. Thanks to extensive pre-lighting of the set, the crew could make the changeover from day to night in under forty-five minutes.

While shooting, Sir Alfred Hitchcock worked only in Jeff’s “apartment”. The actors and actresses in other apartments wore flesh-colored earpieces so that he could radio his directions to them.

All of the sound in this movie is diegetic, meaning that all the music, speech, and other sounds all come from within the world of the movie (with the exception of non-diegetic orchestral music heard in the first three shots of the movie).

Despite big box-office success and four Oscar nominations, the film failed to score a best picture Oscar nomination, any acting nominations, or (most surprisingly) a nomination for the set design.

The film negative was damaged considerably as a result of color dye fading as early as the 1960s. Nearly all of the yellow image dyes had faded. Despite fears that the film had been irrevocably damaged, preservation experts were able to restore the film nearly to its original coloration.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “Notorious”

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