Padme's Library: Friday's Film Adaption: Rear Window -Story Collection by Cornell Woolrich

Friday, January 23, 2015

Friday's Film Adaption: Rear Window -Story Collection by Cornell Woolrich

Summary:
The story that inspired the Alfred Hitchcock film masterpiece! Cornell Woolrich. His name represents steamy, suspenseful fiction, chilling encounters on the dark and sultry landscape of urban America in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, in this special collection, are his classic thrilers, including 'Rear Window', the story of Hal Jeffries who, trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, takes to watching his neighbours through his rear window, and becomes certain that one of those neighbours is a murderer. Also included are such haunting, heart-stopping tales as those involving a man who finds his wife buried alive; a girl trapped with a deranged murderer who likes to knife his victims while dancing; and a woman seizing her chance to escape a sadistic husband, only to find her dream go terrifyingly wrong.

This collection contains:

Rear Window (It Had to Be Murder)

I Won't Take a Minute

Speak to Me of Death

The Dancing Detective (Dime a Dance)

The Light in the Window

The Corpse Next Door

You'll Never See Me Again

The Screaming Laugh

Dead on Her Feet

Waltz

The Book That Squealed

Death Escapes the Eye

For the Rest of Her Life

Film:

Release dates: September 1, 1954

Running time: 112 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast:

James Stewart as L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies

Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont

Wendell Corey as NYPD Det. Lt. Thomas J. Doyle

Thelma Ritter as Stella

Raymond Burr as Lars Thorwald

Judith Evelyn as Miss Lonelyheart

Ross Bagdasarian as the Songwriter

Georgine Darcy as Miss Torso

Frank Cady and Sara Berner as the husband and wife living above the Thorwalds

Jesslyn Fax as Sculptor neighbor with a hearing aid

Rand Harper as the Newlywed man

Irene Winston as Mrs. Anna Thorwald

Havis Davenport as the Newlywed woman

Gig Young as the voice of Jeff's editor at telephone (uncredited)

Harry Landers as the Miss Lonelyhearts's Guest (uncredited)

Ralph Smiles as Carl, Lisa's servant (uncredited)

Director Alfred Hitchcock makes his traditional cameo appearance in the songwriter's apartment, where he is seen winding a clock.

American Film Institute:
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies — #42
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills — #14
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains:
L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries — Nominated Hero
Lars Thorwald — Nominated Villain
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) — #48
AFI's 10 Top 10 — #3 Mystery Film

Trailer:

I have not read the original short story, It Had to be Murder, but I absolutely love the film. Not only is it classic Hitchcock, but classic mystery in general. Jimmy Stewart as "Jeff" Jefferies is perfect blend of humor and setting a scene and all from a wheelchair because of the cast on his leg. Grace Kelly is beautiful and sensuous as Hal's girlfriend, Lisa. It takes the voyeur in all of us to the edge of curiosity and interfering to uphold justice. A definite must to add to your film library.

RATING:

Author Bio:
Cornell Woolrich is widely regarded as the twentieth century’s finest writer of pure suspense fiction. The author of numerous classic novels and short stories (many of which were turned into classic films) such as Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Waltz Into Darkness, and I Married a Dead Man, Woolrich began his career in the 1920s writing mainstream novels that won him comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The bulk of his best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing serialized in pulp magazines or as paperback novels. Because he was prolific, he found it necessary to publish under multiple pseudonyms, including "William Irish" and "George Hopley" [...] Woolrich lived a life as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters and died, alone, in a seedy Manhattan hotel room following the amputation of a gangrenous leg. Upon his death, he left a bequest of one million dollars to Columbia University, to fund a scholarship for young writers.