Hitchcock keeps mixing other sounds into Rear Window as it goes along. We hear traffic sounds and honking horns from the NYC street visible through an alley across the courtyard. We hear the rotor blades of the helicopter that buzzes the sunbathing beauties. Near the end of the film, we finally, fully hear some of the people who never spoke before, like the honeymooning couple("If you told me you'd quit your job, I never would have married you") or the bombshell Miss Torso greeting her Wally Cox-like Army boyfriend("Eddie!" "Its so great to be home, I'm starved.")
Dialogue, music, ambient sounds...the over-ambitious masterpiece that Rear Window so clearly is , is a masterpiece of sight and sound . (Sounds like a good name for a film magazine. Sight and Sound.)
And this: if there is one movie that "Rear Window" reminds me of, "sound-wise" it is George Lucas' "American Graffiti" of 1973, which similarly features a complex sound mix of popular tunes(rock and roll, this time), traffic noises, and muffled, echo-ing sound effects. "Rear Window" and "American Graffiti" would make a great "sound double bill." Maybe Quentin Tarantino can arrange this at his New Beverly movie revival house in West LA.
And this: Robert Altman -- who directed a few Hitchcock TV episodes -- claims Rear Window to be his favorite Hitchcock. Its totally understandable, isn't it? Altman's classics of the seventies -- MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye and Nashville -- all feature a fragmented view of their interacting characters and muffled soundtracks with overlapping dialogue.
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movieghoul (213)
7 years ago
Yes, the soundtrack of Rear Window is a marvel back in those pre-Dolby days. We even hear tugboats on the Hudson river. And the way the music comments on the action, eg, the lyrics of To See You is to Love You touch on the theme of voyeurism and the fact that all the women across the courtyard are alternative Lisas, would make even Kubrick envious. And the drunken singalong of Mona Lisa at the composer's party foreshadows the final image of Lisa's enigmatic smile.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
Yes, the soundtrack of Rear Window is a marvel back in those pre-Dolby days.
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It really is. I'm surprised we haven't seen a documentary on the soundtrack of Rear Window, with modern-day sound recording masters going through it "sound by sound" as other movies get the "shot by shot" study.
Hitchocck was nominated for Best Director for Rear Window, but the movie was not nominated for Best Picture. All these years later, the movie that DID win for 1954 -- On the Waterfront -- still has that great taxicab scene with Brando and Steiger -- but seems MILES BELOW the cinematic power and technical excellence of Rear Window. I know how large On the Waterfront looms in Method circles, but jeez -- Rear Window is simply a much more impressive achievement.
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We even hear tugboats on the Hudson river.
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I did not hear them! I imagine Hitchcock dictated a "soundtrack script" of what sounds should be overlaid.
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And the way the music comments on the action,
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Indeed. This is a film without a score(except over the opening credits) for a REASON. Hitchcock needs the flow of popular hit songs and one "for the movie" constructed new one("Lisa") to take center stage here. I doubt even Bernard Herrmann would have been welcome to get in the way.
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eg, the lyrics of To See You is to Love You touch on the theme of voyeurism and the fact that all the women across the courtyard are alternative Lisas,
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Great point on both aspects of that song. And we get the drunken Mona Lisa, and we get an instrumental of Dino's big hit "That's Amore." Its rather an immersion into a time and place through music.
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would make even Kubrick envious.
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Rear Window seems to be the one that the cinematic genuses like.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
And the drunken singalong of Mona Lisa at the composer's party foreshadows the final image of Lisa's enigmatic smile
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Yeah, I guess I hadn't thought of that one, either!
Recall that Hitchcock said he tried -- and to his mind, failed -- to show "how a song is constructed" over the course of Rear Window. The song is "Lisa," which starts as a few experimental tinkles on the piano keys by the composer, and continues to build over the course of the film as a full-on instrumental -- which helps save the life of Miss Lonelyhearts before finally being debuted(by the composer, to Miss Lonelyhearts, his potential soulmate) with a male singer singing it to full orchestral orchestration.
I find the song "Lisa" to be a melancholy charmer that ends "Rear Window" on just the right note -- even as the final image is a "gag"(Grace is reading Bazaar under that Himalayas book), the final words of the song are moving and things feel profoundly "over." "Leeeee-saaaa." The End.
I wonder if "Lisa" was any sort of radio hit in 54. Its certainly not a standard on Sirius Radio Sinatra.
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movieghoul (213)
7 years ago
And about that composer... A wonderful irony is that Ross Bagdasarian, the struggling composer in RW, would become rich and successful far beyond his wildest dreams as David Saville, at first modestly with the 50s pop hit record Witch Doctor (with such immortal lyrics as "ooh ee ooh ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang"), and the nenormously as creator of the Alvin and the CHipmunks franchise. I wonder if he made more money than Hitchcock?
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
And about that composer... A wonderful irony is that Ross Bagdasarian, the struggling composer in RW, would become rich and successful far beyond his wildest dreams as David Saville, at first modestly with the 50s pop hit record Witch Doctor (with such immortal lyrics as "ooh ee ooh ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang"), and the nenormously as creator of the Alvin and the CHipmunks franchise.
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Its a delicious "Hitchcock connection" to "AL-VINNNN!" isn't it?
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I wonder if he made more money than Hitchcock?
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Probably not given the Psycho and TV show profits alongside all the other movie earnings.
But they could compare bank accounts equally for a few years, no doubt.
Raymond Burr, too. Rear Window has some future moguls in it.
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movieghoul (213)
7 years ago
s at least nominated for SOund, but losing to THe Glenn Miller Story. Also nominated for cinematography, but not for editing, an egregious omission.
I wonder if Hitchcock ran tests in real locations to determine how voices and other sounds would be heard in Jeffries apartment.
BTW, I think we hear the tugboat whistle when Jeffries is sleeping during the overnight scene where we also hear what appears to be Mrs T screaming and then getting bashed on the head.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
s at least nominated for SOund, but losing to THe Glenn Miller Story.
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So a James Stewart movie lost to a James Stewart movie. Two giant hits of 1954. Stewart WAS a superstar at times. Or at least lucky to be in the right movies.
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Also nominated for cinematography, but not for editing, an egregious omission.
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Hmm...like...Psycho! Hitch and the Academy, a bad match. Also like Psycho: a Best Director nom, but not Best Picture. And Rear Window should have been nominated for, and won, both. (On the Waterfront is a Method Acting Classic, but a rather overblown film with amateurish filmmaking.)
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I wonder if Hitchcock ran tests in real locations to determine how voices and other sounds would be heard in Jeffries apartment.
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I'll bet he did. He was famous for doing that. Its how he got the effect of "rising street noises" at the end of Rope....
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
BTW, I think we hear the tugboat whistle when Jeffries is sleeping during the overnight scene
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Intriguing...I'll give it a listen...its interesting how Rear Window plants in our minds the idea of a nearby Hudson River that we never see. We hear tugboats and we imagine Thorwald dumping body parts in there, but we never SEE the river, as I recall.
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where we also hear what appears to be Mrs T screaming and then getting bashed on the head
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Interesting. I recall the scream and then the sound of something crashing and breaking. But I'm not sure I visualized her getting bashed on the head. Indeed, I'm not sure HOW Lars killed her except...not a gun. Too noisy. Bashed her head? Strangled her? Knifed her?
Its left to the imagination....as far as I can tell.
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movieghoul (213)
7 years ago
Interesting that a line of dialogue at the end reveals that Thorwald used the East River, not the Hudson, to dispose of his wife, even though that would have been further from where he lived. Possibly the Hudson would have too much traffic for him to avoid being noticed. Or there's the risk that someone from the neighborhood might recognize him.
Thorwald is said to live on West 9th Street which is now known as Christopher. There is an actual pre-war red brick apartment building just east of the corner of Christopher and Hudson which looks like the model for the building depicted in the film.
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ecarle (14979)
7 years ago
Interesting that a line of dialogue at the end reveals that Thorwald used the East River, not the Hudson, to dispose of his wife,
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Oops. The East River. Right. Now you know why I stick to the Psycho board.
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even though that would have been further from where he lived.
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Interesting. I've only been to NYC a few times, but I remember that now.
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Possibly the Hudson would have too much traffic for him to avoid being noticed. Or there's the risk that someone from the neighborhood might recognize him.
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That's the kind of detail that Hitchcock was famous for working out via detailed discussions with his writer. Thus a certain logic was imposed on his otherwise fantastic tales.
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Thorwald is said to live on West 9th Street which is now known as Christopher. There is an actual pre-war red brick apartment building just east of the corner of Christopher and Hudson which looks like the model for the building depicted in the film.
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I saw a short film on YouTube -- tied in, I believe, with the "Writing with Hitchcock" website by Steven DeRosa, that gave a tour of the "real" Rear Window apartment complex. It was "close"(with the courtyard and all) but much smaller than the "apartment house universe" depicted in Hitchcock's film. And empty of visible people...
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