Plot summary (with spoilers): Outside L.B. Jeffries' window is a series of apartment buildings, an alleyway leading out into the street, a brick wall surrounding the whole area, and a little garden with pretty flowers. It's quite the Rockwellian view. On one channel, there's the sexpot, dubbed "Miss Torso". She runs around in short-shorts and a tube top and dances and stretches and sunbathes. On another channel, there's an old married couple who sleep on a mattress on the fire escape, because it's so hot outside. The wife has a basket and she puts her dog in it and lowers it down to the courtyard floor to do it's business. Heh. Then there's Piano Man, who sits at his stool all day and composes one classic after another. An older woman lives below him, she sits on her lawnchair and reads. To her right is Miss Lonelyhearts. She's lonely. Off to the side is a newly married couple. He carries her over the threshold, they kiss...and then they close the drapes. And finally, there's a gray-haired older man and his bedridden wife. They argue and seem not to like each other much.
Jeffries sees it all because he has a broken leg, and is stuck in his little apartment. It's been 7 weeks and the internet is still 40 years off, so there's not much else to do but watch PeopleTV all day. The cast finally comes off next week though, and then Jeffries can get back to his job as a press photographer.
His nurse Stella shows up and she's cantankerous and sexless and is, like any good friend of a main character, over-invested in Jeffries' life to the point of refusing to have a life of her own. She nags at Jeffries that he should marry his hot girlfriend Lisa, but he says he doesn't want to settle down and the boring married life is not for him, and she says well now that we've set up your character arc, I've got to be going now, and then she jets.
Then Lisa comes and makes him dinner and nags him to marry her and they rehash the same stuff he just did with Stella. She says if they get married, she'll go with him on his dangerous globetrotting assignments, but he points out she's just a girl. She leaves, disappointed.
He sits in his chair. He watches Miss Torso entertain four other men who hang on her every word while drinking cocktails. I'm not sure what kind of party that is. He watches Miss Lonelyhearts get all dressed up, go to the door, let no one in, have an imaginary conversation with him, pour him wine, drink a toast, and then collapse into sobs. It's beautiful. He sees Piano Man stumble home drunk. He sees the old couple hurriedly come in from the fire escape when it begins to rain. And then he hears a scream and some broken glass, but doesn't know where it came from. He falls asleep in his chair, wakes up and it's two thirty. He sees the gray haired man leave his apartment with a giant metal suitcase. He falls back asleep. Wakes up thirty minutes later. The gray-haired man reenters his apartment, but shortly after leaves again with the suitcase. He does this one more time.
The next morning, Jeffries is puzzled. The blinds are still down across the street in the bedroom, but in the living room area, he sees the man cleaning a large saw and butcher knife.
When Stella visits for physical therapy, he tells her about what he saw and heard and that he's suspicious because he hasn't seen the wife all day. Stella says it's still too early in the movie for her to believe him yet, and then she jets.
Lisa shows up and declares that she's spending the night and they kiss a few times. But he's distracted. He tells her what he knows, but she also doesn't believe him until they look across the street and see that the man was opened all the curtains and the wife isn't there at all, and there's a big human-sized trunk tied up with rope. Now Lisa's onboard, and Stella too. They also witness the man going through his wife's purse and laying her jewelry out on the table. They call Jeffries' friend on the police force, Thomas Doyle. Doyle does some investigating and learns several tenants saw the woman and her husband leave that morning. And BTW, their names are Thornhill. Dr and Mrs. Thornhill. Oh, and he intercepted Thornhill's mail and she sent him a postcard saying she made it safely to her mother's. So there.
He leaves, but then Lisa and Jeffries hear another scream. They go to the window, as do the other neighbors. The older woman upstairs is shrieking because her dog is dead. The woman downstairs runs over to the dead dog and pronounces him dead, his neck broken, and then kindly puts him into the basket so they can pull him back up. The older woman does this whole "WHICH ONE OF YOU DID IT?! J'ACCUSE!" thing while everyone just gawks at her and then they finally go back into their houses. Jeffries notices that everyone came to the window but Thornhill and is further convinced of his guilt. He decides that the dog must've been digging in the garden too much and perhaps discovered something he shouldn't have. He gets Lisa to go over to Thornhill's and put a note under the door that says "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO HER".
She goes over there, in quite the harrowing scene. Once Thornhill reads the note, he races out of the apartment and she just manages to stay out of sight.
The next plan is for Jeffries to call Thornhill and pretend to be a blackmailer and ask him to meet him in the bar on the corner. They do this, and then Lisa and Stella go across the street with a shovel and start digging up the flowers. They find nothing, so Lisa decides to climb the fire escape and search his apartment. Stella comes running back. Jeffries watches in agony as Lisa roots through Thornhill's things and then both he and Stella are distracted by Miss Lonelyhearts downstairs holding a big handful of sleeping pills. Stella says to call the cops and they're watching her instead of Lisa and don't notice Thornhill coming back. He enters the apartment and Lisa hides and Jeffries tells the cops that a man is assaulting a woman across the street and Thornhill proves him right by finding Lisa and grabbing and shaking her. The cops show up like immediately, like they were beamed there or something and they arrest Lisa for breaking and entering. She signals out the window to Jeffries that she's wearing Mrs. Thornhill's wedding ring. Thornhill sees her signal and looks out the window and right at Jeffries, who rolls backwards but..too late.
Stella runs out to bail out Lisa while Jeffries calls Doyle, hurriedly giving him all the new info and triumphantly concluding that the wedding ring is proof that Mrs. Thornhill is dead, which it totally isn't, but whatever. Doyle says he'll get Lisa freed and then be right over. I'm pretty sure she's not even booked yet, but okay.
Jeffries hangs up and then the phone immediately rings again and Jeffries says, "you gotta hurry, Thornhill's gonna get out of there" and then there's silence. D'oh! (This is the movie cliche to end all chiches, the "pick up the phone and assume it's someone else and put your foot in your mouth" thing, but I actually fell for it. So, good job, movie.)
Jeffries sits in the dark, terrified. The phone clicks. He sits some more, looks around for weapons, picks up his camera. He hears footsteps outside. The door opens. Seriously, Jeffries! You didn't lock the door?! Thornhill stands there. He rushes forward, Jeffries flashes the camera in his face, several times. Thornhill pushes it aside and starts strangling him. Jeffries cries out and across the way, Doyle, Lisa, and some cops are trying to get into Thornhill's apartment. (Oh, come on! Seriously? Is the police station across the street?!)
They race over as Thornhill's got Jeffries out of the chair and half out the window. The cops burst in and grab Thornhill, who lets go and Jeffries falls out the rear window and two stories down onto the courtyard with a crash. Lisa rushes over to him while all the neighbors rush to their windows and stare.
In the final scene, we see Miss Lonelyhearts is dating Piano Man, and explaining to him that hearing his beautiful music saved her life. Miss Torso's army sweetheart has come home, and he's a pipsqueak with glasses. The older neighbors have a new puppy. The newlyweds are nagging each other. And Jeffries has two broken legs. Lisa sits on his bed, reading a book about traveling the world. He smiles at her and closes his eyes to rest. That's when she puts down the magazine and picks up a fashion one instead. Oh, Lisa!
Review: So, yeah. This is one of those movies that I feel like I've seen without actually seeing, given the number of parodies and remakes and different versions out there. So of course I knew the main story and where it was going, but what I wasn't really prepared for was all the little mini-stories with the other neighbors and how they all had very satisfying little arcs themselves. It was very cool, especially the way they kept influencing the main plot in little ways, like the dog or Miss Lonelyhearts distracting Jeffries at a key moment. Hitchcock did an amazing job of creating a great little world, here. And it was perfect that every scene that look place outside of Jeffries' apartment was shown as viewed through Jeffries' POV with no cheating with closeups or peeks around the corner. It led to a very claustrophobic feeling, and greatly ratcheted up the suspense in the end when we knew Jeffries was powerless to defend himself. It was also a really neat reversal when Jeffries was literally pushed out of his viewing room and the tables were turned, with everyone now watching him. The script was tighter than North By Northwest, which I appreciated too, and while there were still some "that would never happen" moments, particularly with the speed at which people moved from Point A to Point B, I didn't mind them much this time. Okay, I still did mind it, though. In some places the writing is really sharp. I just wish Hitchcock cared a little more sometimes about plot mechanics. But all in all, I think I'm becoming quite the fan. There's one with a bunch of people on a boat, right? I've always heard about that one. Is that one good? Ooh, and I wanna see Birds! And the Leopold and Lobe one, too.
Stars: Four out of five.
Next, "It Happened One Night" and then one I've seen, wherein some overrated actor yells for Stella. A lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment