Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538125
40 C I N E M O N T A G E B O O K R E V I E W (1943), and "Strangers on a Train" (1951) must be counted among his masterpieces — but none with the combination of per- sonal revelation and aesthetic perfection found in "Rear Window." "For the first time, a commercially successful film would force its audience to examine their inner life and the way they regarded others," O'Callaghan writes. " 'Rear Window' held a mirror to society without preaching. It simply presented the universal facts of human behavior." As O'Callaghan demonstrates, "Rear Window" represented a risk for its creative team (and its stu- dio) from the get-go. Among other challenges was the perception that the single-set location — Jefferies' Greenwich Village apartment, from which he makes his observations of his neighbors — was somehow restrictive. "With the limited setting, mostly filmed in a shabby, dark room o f t h e p ro ta go n i s t 's a p a r t m e n t , studio executives weren't sure what to make of it," she writes. "It was also possible during such a conservative time in history that audiences could morally object to its voyeuristic nature." And some did — but that was after the cameras had finished ro l l i n g a n d t h e f i n a l s p l i c e h a d been made. To start with, O'Callaghan freely admits that the treatment for what became "Rear Window," which was submitted to Hitchcock by Broadway director-producer Joshua Logan, was for what she calls an "experimental mainstream film." It was based on the short story "It Had to Be Murder" by Cornell Woolrich, whose sensibility was well-suited for Hitchcock. "Some readers couldn't get past the inconsistencies of his storytelling, which sometimes took bizarre tangents, but Hitchcock was entranced by 'It Had to Be Murder,'" O'Callaghan writes. "Making the antihero a typical Peeping Tom confined to his apartment by an injury ... struck the director as pure genius." To adapt the tale, Hitchcock's agent, Lew Wasserman, pulled another name from his client list, an on- the-rise screenwriter named John Michael Hayes. A radio veteran, his most salable attributes, according to O'Callaghan, were his youth, eagerness, and low price tag. However, the two men turned out to be simpatico; Hayes said he "accidentally" brought Hitchcock a fresh viewpoint on aspects of suspense. Although Hitchcock had previously mined Cary Grant's persona for its com- bination of deviltry and charm in films like "Suspicion" (1941) and "Notorious" (1946), the director needed an actor with a different, more workaday set of skills to i n h a b i t Je f fe r i e s. " [G ra n t ] wa s to o charming, too dapper — the type of man Hitchcock fantasized himself becoming," writes O'Callaghan, who notes that the di- rector saw that Stewart's "likable common man appeal" concealed "repression of dark desire, something Hitchcock wrestled with himself." For Stewart, adrift with a sagging postwar screen career, this was a welcome opportunity. "I guess I'd only be suitable for playing grandfather to Mickey Rooney," the actor had told The New York Times in 1947. Hitchcock had something more substantial on offer: a part, O'Callaghan notes, that demanded him "to dig deep to portray the complexities and contradictions of being a flawed human." For Jefferies' girlfriend (and occasional co-conspirator in snoop- ing), Lisa Fremont, Hitchcock seized upon Grace Kelly, the leading lady of the film he was working on amid preparations for "Rear Window," 1954's shot-in-3D English mystery "Dial M for Murder." "Until I met Grace, I just wanted to get through this thing ['Dial M'] as quickly and unceremoniously as I could," the director said. "Then I re- alized, here was a girl I could really do something with." O ' C a l l a g h a n d o e s n o t m e r e l y recount details of pre-production and shooting, but offers her incisive take on what decisions were made and why. For example, she contrasts the heavies in other Hitchcock films with Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), the neighbor who falls under Jefferies' accusatory gaze in "Rear Window." "Previous villains in Hitchcock films were often tall and attractive. . . . But Lars Thorwald circles a completely different orbit," she writes. "He's a down-on-his-luck, depressed shmuck who sells jewelry for a living." Viewers who had not before noticed Burr's resemblance to a certain then-famous studio head will not, after reading O'Callaghan's account, be able to get the image out of their mind: "[Burr] bore such a strikingly uncanny resemblance to produc- er David O. Selznick, it was eerie." Details abound, too, on Paramount Pictures' Stage 18, on and beneath which sat the Greenwich Village set. "For the courtyard, laborers had to dig thirty feet below the stage level, so far that they struck water," writes O'Callaghan, who also notes that since Hitchcock and company had set up shop in the corner of the set that housed Jefferies's apartment, means had to be