Rear Window

Rear Window, 1954
Rear Window (Collector's Edition)

I don't remember when I watched Disturbia for the first time, I think it was at some point when I was home visiting my Dad. I think. The point is that I remember watching part of a Shia LaBeouf movie in my Dad's living room, which I'm fairly certain was infact Disturbia. Also known as Rear Window.

Keeping that in mind, I wasn't really too excited with watching Rear Window. I mean, I'm pretty sure I peaked early with Dial M For Murder. In my opinion it's the best Hitchcock movie that I've seen yet.

After having watched the movie:

(Possible spoilers below)

Well, I was right on a couple of accounts. The movie is a lot like Disturbia, at least to me. I've since talked casually about the movie, prior to writing this, with a couple of people who think it's a little far fetched. It was hard for me to watch and really pay that much attention too, because there's just so much dialogue between characters with little to no action. Maybe that's a Hitchcock thing and I'm being picky, but I have a hard time just listening and not letting my mind wonder.

There are a couple of great stories that I dug up from the internet about the movie though. I hadn't realized it until recently, but this movie as well as four other titles had become known as the 'Five Lost Hitchcocks.' Essentially what happened was that Hitchcock had well established himself in the filmmaking industry and was able to buy back the rights to Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. The rights to these titles would go to his daughter, and were released for the first time in the 1950s, which is when Hitchcock was rather unofficially dubbed the Master of Suspense. It's only unofficial, because there really isn't a ceremony that's involved.

But getting back to just Rear Window, the greatest thing about this movie, was again what I had learned after watching the movie. In my mind, Hitchcock was this great director who just kind of got to do whatever he wanted to do and people let him get away with things because he was Hitchcock. It's kind of the same status the Rob Rod has 'earned.' Hitchcock had the production company rip out the floor in order to create a 40' high apartment building. AND not only that, it housed thirty-one apartments, eight of which were completely furnished and the main apartment in the movie had running water and electricity hooked up to it. I can't imagine ever having anything this big built in a soundstage.

It's hard to imagine that beautiful courtyard is really

an old basement in a soundstage.

Final thoughts: Wow! I want to work on that kind of a movie, where you just get the okay to tear out the basement of a soundstage and then later buy back the rights to the movie from the people you had initially sold the concept to.

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