The Window
Directed by Ted Tetzlaff
Written by Mel Dinelli based on a story by Cornell Woolrich
1949/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Warner Archive DVD
[box] Police Officer: A good lickin’ never hurt anybody, boy. My old man used to give me enough of ’em when I was a kid. Hey, still in all, I never thought of callin’ the cops when he did.[/box]
This is a gritty urban version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.
Ten-year-old Tommy (Bobby Driscoll) is an imaginative child whose tall tales are driving his father (Arthur Kennedy) and mother (Barbara Hale) to distraction. One hot summer night while he is sleeping on the fire escape of the tenement building where they live, Tommy wakes to see the upstairs neighbors murdering a man. He tries to tell his parents and the police but nobody will believe that those nice Kellersons (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman) could be killers … except the Kellersons, of course. When the terrified Tommy is left at home alone, he must use all his courage and cunning to evade them.
I didn’t find this film too visually striking but the premise certainly is intriguing. It had me thinking of how tough it can be to be child and not believed or even taken seriously. Paul Stewart (the butler in Citizen Kane) is an appropriately sinister murderer and the chase through the city streets and into a condemned building is harrowing. I was surprised at the amount of threatened and actual violence to a child for a movie of this period.
The Window was nominated for an Oscar for Best Film Editing.
For clips from the film on TCM go here http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/579260/Window-The-Movie-Clip-You-Never-Mean-Any-Harm.html – cinematography by Robert de Grasse and William O. Steiner
