Hello!
The comments on this profile are unclaimed and thus are unverified.
Do they belong to you? Claim these comments.
wwolfe
Is this you? Claim Profile »
9 months ago
in Wednesday Night at the Movies: Sweet Smell of Success Open Thread on newcritics
I love knowing that Hunsecker lived in the Brill Building. Now I can picture Lieber and Stoller holed up in their office somewhere else in the same building, in that very same year, writing "Jailhouse Rock."
Some years ago, American Heritage magazine ran a long piece about Ed Sullivan. Ed hated Walter Wichell, for his bigotry and all-around thuggishness. One night when Ed was dining at 21, or one of the other famous places of the day, when Winchell walked in. The latter had just written a nasty piece in which he smeared someone for the usual racist and/or red-baiting reasons, Seeing him enter, Sullivan got up from his table, walked across the room, grabbed Winchell by his belt and collar and hustled him into the men's room, where he stuck Walter's head in the toilet and flushed. That little story upped my opinion of Ed a lot.
Some years ago, American Heritage magazine ran a long piece about Ed Sullivan. Ed hated Walter Wichell, for his bigotry and all-around thuggishness. One night when Ed was dining at 21, or one of the other famous places of the day, when Winchell walked in. The latter had just written a nasty piece in which he smeared someone for the usual racist and/or red-baiting reasons, Seeing him enter, Sullivan got up from his table, walked across the room, grabbed Winchell by his belt and collar and hustled him into the men's room, where he stuck Walter's head in the toilet and flushed. That little story upped my opinion of Ed a lot.
1 reply
Jim
I had no idea Ed Sullivan was like that. Good on him.
9 months ago
in Wednesday Night at the Movies: Rear Window on newcritics
Two comments. First, Stewart watching the other apartments has always seemed much more like the theatrical experience - it practically feels as though each apartment's window serves as a proscenium arch - than like a moviegoing experience. Second, a comment above notes the absence of children in the building, but I wonder if in a sense Stewart's character can be seen in some ways as a child. He makes his living doing something that seems like a boy's hobby - perhaps that seemed even more so in the era of the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit? - and, without getting too Greek and/or Freudian, I think to some extent he allows Kelly to act as a mother figure, at least while he's convalescing: it's as if he's a kid who's home sick from school, and he's changing channels on TV when he moves his gaze from one apartment to another, while "mom" checks on him to see how he's doing. I don't want to add an unecessary ick factor, but I've always got a strong feeling of "I don't want to grow up" from Stewart's character. This contrasts with some of his other personality traits, such as the sophisticated man about town and the globe-trotting adventurer - although these, too, can be seen perhaps as a "Boys Life" idea of being a grown-up.
The set fascinated me when I first saw the movie (I'm another who got to see it during its early '80s re-release). The sense of near-total exposure (no pun intended) for all the apartment dwellers unnerved me a little. I recall thinking that I'd want to buy some tinted windowpanes, fast.
The set fascinated me when I first saw the movie (I'm another who got to see it during its early '80s re-release). The sense of near-total exposure (no pun intended) for all the apartment dwellers unnerved me a little. I recall thinking that I'd want to buy some tinted windowpanes, fast.
1 reply
cinetrix
Siren: Thanks so much for convening this discussion of one of my favorite films to teach. I'm just sorry I missed out on the fun in real time. There's so much to talk about.
wwolfe, you're quite right about the curtains-up quality of the film, Midway through, they're brought down by Lisa, who's intent on an intermission from the drama across the courtyard, but they quickly come back up in response to the scream that announces the death of the dog. [As in classical drama, the deaths occur "off."] Also, every sequence of the film begins/ends with a fade, which only adds to the theatrical feel.
But about that dog. I think it's quite right to presume the couple is childless. They're so sexless! We're shown as much as the camera makes its first investigation of the neighboring apartments in the morning, when an alarm clock prompts them to sit up from their improvised bed on the fire escape. Not only are they sleeping in the public eye, they're sleeping head to toe, two decisions that seem to rule out acts of a generative nature, shall we say.
But not everyone in the film is childless. In the second counter-clockwise investigatory pan, at dusk, the camera just barely glimpses a father and daughter, I believe. The gender may be off, but we do see a parent and a child out on a balcony, way up at the top of the frame in the right-hand corner of the courtyard, past the musician's enviable apartment but before the camera reveals that amazing sunset sky over Miss Torso's. And there are shrieking children playing in the opening between buildings on the left.
The Siren also mentioned our complicity with Jeff's subjectivity and his rear window ethics or lack thereof. We are implicated, but the camera doesn't always maintain Jeff's p.o.v. For example, those circular surveys I mentioned [there are three in all] seem to occur while Jeff is sleeping: at daybreak, just before The Kiss, and as the composer's "Lisa" plays on the soundtrack and we see the resolutions of all the little dramas, ending with Jeff and Lisa's own. It's as though the camera goes walkabout to help whet/sate the viewer's curiosity at key moments, rendering us just as guilty of peeping as Jeff is.
Which brings me back to the dog. These close-ups of the neighbors that the Siren mentions also can't be Jeff's p.o.v.--he's too far away and there's no masking to suggest that we're looking through binoculars or a suggestively long lens, as is present at other moments when we're brought closer to the action than is physically possible. More interesting to me is how these rapid close-ups of the women--Miss Torso, Miss Lonelyhearts--are punctuated by and linked to shots of Lisa looking out the window. Which would mean that the camera is positioned outside the window looking in, and the framing and the distance in her shots mirrors that of the other women's shots. It's such an interesting choice to collapse visual/spatial distance at the moment that draws everybody to their windows. For a brief moment, they become people, not players, just like Lisa. And we're encouraged to really look at them.
wwolfe, you're quite right about the curtains-up quality of the film, Midway through, they're brought down by Lisa, who's intent on an intermission from the drama across the courtyard, but they quickly come back up in response to the scream that announces the death of the dog. [As in classical drama, the deaths occur "off."] Also, every sequence of the film begins/ends with a fade, which only adds to the theatrical feel.
But about that dog. I think it's quite right to presume the couple is childless. They're so sexless! We're shown as much as the camera makes its first investigation of the neighboring apartments in the morning, when an alarm clock prompts them to sit up from their improvised bed on the fire escape. Not only are they sleeping in the public eye, they're sleeping head to toe, two decisions that seem to rule out acts of a generative nature, shall we say.
But not everyone in the film is childless. In the second counter-clockwise investigatory pan, at dusk, the camera just barely glimpses a father and daughter, I believe. The gender may be off, but we do see a parent and a child out on a balcony, way up at the top of the frame in the right-hand corner of the courtyard, past the musician's enviable apartment but before the camera reveals that amazing sunset sky over Miss Torso's. And there are shrieking children playing in the opening between buildings on the left.
The Siren also mentioned our complicity with Jeff's subjectivity and his rear window ethics or lack thereof. We are implicated, but the camera doesn't always maintain Jeff's p.o.v. For example, those circular surveys I mentioned [there are three in all] seem to occur while Jeff is sleeping: at daybreak, just before The Kiss, and as the composer's "Lisa" plays on the soundtrack and we see the resolutions of all the little dramas, ending with Jeff and Lisa's own. It's as though the camera goes walkabout to help whet/sate the viewer's curiosity at key moments, rendering us just as guilty of peeping as Jeff is.
Which brings me back to the dog. These close-ups of the neighbors that the Siren mentions also can't be Jeff's p.o.v.--he's too far away and there's no masking to suggest that we're looking through binoculars or a suggestively long lens, as is present at other moments when we're brought closer to the action than is physically possible. More interesting to me is how these rapid close-ups of the women--Miss Torso, Miss Lonelyhearts--are punctuated by and linked to shots of Lisa looking out the window. Which would mean that the camera is positioned outside the window looking in, and the framing and the distance in her shots mirrors that of the other women's shots. It's such an interesting choice to collapse visual/spatial distance at the moment that draws everybody to their windows. For a brief moment, they become people, not players, just like Lisa. And we're encouraged to really look at them.
