The Window (1949)
The Window (1949) is one of those films that I have often seen mentioned as something special, but it is not a known classic and has never been shown anywhere near me. But sooner or later all good films come to those who wait.
It is a short, tense, thrilling film, shot on location in New York, and about a little boy (Tommy, played by Bobby Driscoll) who witnesses a murder during a particularly hot summer's night when he is unable to sleep. Alas, nobody believes him. He first tries to tell his parents, and when they dismiss it as nightmares or lies he goes to the police. The police react much the same way as the parents. Instead the boy has to fight for himself, to survive and expose the killers.
Almost the entire film takes place in his apartment building, and it grows more and more tense for each scene. The final rooftop chase, ending in a collapsing building, made me gasp a few times. Excellent stuff. It is difficult to understand how they made it, because it looks agonisingly real, and dangerous for the actors. The film was produced by RKO, and they had an excellent special effects team, but it still looks dangerous.
The Window is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich, called “The Boy Cried Murder,” (adapted by Mel Dinelli) and it does work well as a companion piece to that other film in which someone, unable to sleep during a hot New York summer, believes he has witnessed a murder; namely Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). It too is based on a story by Woolrich, called “It Had to Be Murder.” But The Window does not have the many different layers and ironies of Hitchcock’s film, it is more straight and narrow.
There is another Hitchcock connection in that The Window is directed by former cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff, who had a few years earlier shot Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946). Most of the famous films Tetzlaff had been cinematographer of, for example many of Carole Lombard's best films, and Notorious too, have a more glossy, velvety sheen, which is completely absent in The Window. This one goes for a more rough and realistic style. The many shots of the real streets and buildings of New York gives the film a strong sense of place, of a particularity in the here and now. The Rio de Janeiro in which Notorious is set is not a real place, only a fantasy.1
One of the fascinating things about The Window is its depiction of childhood. The kids, not just our main character Bobby, live and play on the streets. They do go home every now and then to eat, but they seem to live a separate life from their parents. And Bobby’s parents have no hesitation about leaving him alone when they have to go away for the night, or nights. This is one reason why he is able to outsmart the killers, he has practice as a street-smart kid who knows the neighbourhood inside and out.
After being so impressed by The Window, I watched two other films directed by Tetzlaff. The White Tower (1950), which is set and shot in Switzerland and about a climb up a tall mountain peak, the tower of the film’s title, was OK. The other was a Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation called The Treasure of Lost Canyon (1952), with William Powell as a larger-than-life character who adopts an orphan boy. It was also OK. But neither is special the way The Window is special.
Tetzlaff worked several times with the director Mitchell Leisen, including the wonderful Hands Across the Table (1935). Twice he worked with George Stevens, The Talk of the Town (1942), for which Tetzlaff was nominated for an Academy Award for best cinematography, and The More the Merrier (1943).