Grace
Page 13
At the time that Rear Window was filmed, Edith Head, head designer at Paramount, had long been a legend—an authority—in her field. Only 5’1” in height, she always wore glasses and bangs. She rarely smiled and was known for her strict regimen. Between 1924 and 1981, she was listed as costume designer, co-designer, or design assistant for 781 films.160 However, she herself claimed that she worked on well over 1,100 movies. Undoubtedly this small woman did not lack any self-confidence. Over the years, she significantly shaped the clothing styles and images, as well as the identities, of some of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, including Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Swanson, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Doris Day, Olivia de Havilland, Shirley MacLaine—and Grace Kelly. At this time in 1950s Hollywood, the unique and delicate Audrey Hepburn functioned, to a certain degree, as the antithesis to the curvy, brunette Elizabeth Taylor, just as the stylish, elegant Grace Kelly embodied the opposite of the more voluptuous, blonde Marilyn Monroe.
However, despite all of these famous names, costume designer Head was certain of one thing: “I’ve dressed thousands of actors, actresses, and animals, but whenever I am asked which star is my personal favorite, I answer, ‘Grace Kelly.’ She is a charming lady, a most gifted actress and, to me, a valued friend.”161
Edith Head first worked with Alfred Hitchcock when she dressed Ingrid Bergman for his romantic espionage film, Notorious (1946). She would continue to work with him until his final film Family Plot (1976) with only a few exceptions, which include Psycho and Frenzy. Following Hitchcock’s meticulously detailed instructions, she designed the costumes for the initially insecure Kim Novak in her complex double role as Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo and for Tippi Hedren in The Birds and Marnie. For her achievements in the field of costume design, Edith Head won eight Oscars over the course of her long life, including ones for the Audrey Hepburn films Roman Holiday (1953) and Sabrina (1954), and the movie All About Eve (1950) with Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, and a very young Marilyn Monroe. In addition, she received thirty-five Academy Award nominations. For a woman in this field, who during the early years of the 1930s and 1940s provided costumes for several dozen movies a year, this was a singular achievement.
Among her numerous Oscar nominations was the one she received for her costume design for To Catch a Thief, especially for the wardrobe she designed for Grace Kelly. However, this time the usually successful Edith Head struck out. As she once stated, “[it was] the single greatest disappointment of my costume-design career.”162 Perhaps this deep disappointment was influenced by her close identification as a costume designer with this movie: “When people ask me who is my favorite actress, who is my favorite actor, who is my favorite director, and what is my favorite movie, I say to them, just look over the roofs of Nice and you’ll find all the answers. [To Catch a Thief] was a dream for a costume designer.”163
On November 29, 1953, the first day of shooting Rear Window began. In no other film—except perhaps To Catch a Thief—is Grace Kelly so breathtakingly charming and lovely as she is here. Under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock, as already could be seen in the previous Dial M for Murder, she bloomed, completely unfolding both inside and out. In Rear Window, one can see most explicitly what Grace could bring forth under Hitchcock’s mentorship. It is as if she turns her most innermost self to the outside. Her fragility is apparent, as is her determination to speak her mind. Although it is not until her surprising portrayal in George Seaton’s The Country Girl (1954) that she received an Oscar on March 30, 1955, handed to her by her costar and lover, William Holden, Rear Window is indisputably the most important film of her career.
The shutters of the three-winged window slowly open, as the title credits scroll by and lively, cheerful music plays. After the final credit, “Directed by Alfred Hitchcock,” a view is granted of the entire scene, one of the largest and most incredible film sets that had been constructed to date. A complete New York interior courtyard in Greenwich Village with thirty-one apartments, twelve of which are completely furnished. All of this was constructed in Paramount Studios. This is a microcosm. A reflection of human existence. Rear Window is undoubtedly one of the most layered, important, and beautiful Hitchcock films—perhaps in some ways, the quintessential Hitchcock film. John Michael Hayes’s screenplay adaptation of Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story goes far beyond its literary basis. In addition, Hitchcock added elements from the real-life criminal case of Patrick Mahon and Dr. Crippen.
Here the window frame serves as the edges of the film frame. People move around in the background, and the viewer’s gaze follows, from the very start, through the window, from inside to outside. The viewer is the observer, the voyeur. After the titles, the camera focuses on the middle window pane, and then the first cut comes. In the courtyard, a black cat runs through the garden, birds fly up, and the camera pans along the apartments. In variously sized shots, the camera (Robert Burks) sets up a long take of the entire set. The camera finally focuses on a close-up shot of the sweating professional photographer L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart, 1908–1997) and a thermometer. It is morning, and the thermometer already registers 90°F. After another cut, the camera returns to Stewart inside his two-room apartment and pans across his plastered leg: “Here lie the broken bones of L.B. Jeffries.” The camera then cuts quickly to the back part of the room and glides across Jeffries’s exposed work instruments: camera, film, slides, folder numbers with his cover designs. Then a fade-out.
The exposition is, in itself, a little story. Without any commentary, the protagonist is introduced in his bachelor apartment, along with his unfortunate situation, his career, his field, and how he lives. Hitchcock’s manipulation of the viewer is already complete at this point. The viewer now sees the courtyard primarily through Jeffries’s eyes. Only in a few scenes does he/she stand outside. The subjective view is presented as the objective one. The gaze of the viewer is that of the camera. It is Jeffries’s gaze. Through this blending, which combines the viewer’s position as audience with that of the act of seeing, an indiscretion is committed from the very beginning. The viewer becomes the voyeur. Rear Window is absolutely a movie about voyeurism. About secretive observations, about the external intrusion into the internal private spheres of totally unknown people, even if they are one’s immediate neighbors. And Jeffries, the photographer, is to a certain degree a professional voyeur.
The pragmatic nurse Stella (Thema Ritter), who regularly gives Jeffries massages, delivers one of the film’s key, anticipatory statements: “I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away . . . I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin’ out the window. See things you shouldn’t see. Trouble.”164
“Jeff if you could only see yourself!” complains Jeffries’s fiancée, the extremely attractive model Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly), in reference to his activities. She says this before she is convinced by his suspicions that Lars Thorwald, a man living in the second floor of the building, has killed his wife, cut her into pieces, and removed her from the apartment in a large packing crate in the pouring rain. With his telephoto lens, what Stella calls his “portable keyhole,” Jeffries observes how Thorwald wraps a large saw and a large kitchen knife in newspaper. Several times, Jeffries and Lisa ask each other if they should be doing what they are doing. Jeff says to Lisa, “I wonder if it’s ethical to watch a man with binoculars and a long-focus lens.” She replies: “Jeff, if someone came in here, they wouldn’t believe what they’d see. You and me with long faces, plunged into despair because we find out a man didn’t kill his wife. We’re two of the most frightening ghouls I’ve ever known.”
Jeffries’s old war buddy, Police Detective Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey), views the justification of their activities critically. However, their actions are ultimately the only ones that uncover the actual murder of Thorwald’s wife. This is the driving plot element in Rear Window: the MacGuffin. The actual subject of the plot is the relationship b
etween Jeffries and Lisa.
The French Nouvelle Vague directors Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer, who along with François Truffaut worked as film critics during the 1950s for the renowned Cahiers du Cinéma in Paris, appropriately compared the courtyard wall (and its windows into each apartment), over which Jeffries gazes throughout the entire film, to “an ensemble of rabbit cages.”165 And in these cages, which on the other hand also resemble prison cells, loneliness reigns supreme. It is unimportant which social status the residents have, or if they are single or married—none of them seem to be fulfilled or happy. The spectrum ranges from a childless husband and wife, who always sleep on their balcony and lower their dog into the little rose garden in the courtyard via a basket and rope; to the unhappily lonely single woman, Miss Lonelyhearts; to Miss Torso who dances constantly through her apartment and is surrounded by aimless men; to the sculptress who works on unconventional sculptures in the garden; to the young unsuccessful pianist who composes the thematic song “Lisa”; to the young, newly married couple who, at least at first, spend their time behind closed shutters.
In his now legendary fifty-hour interview with François Truffaut in August 1962, which was eventually published in 1966 as a book, Hitchcock commented on Jeffries’s view of the courtyard: “You had every type of behavior, you had little stories going in each one . . . [it was] reflecting a little world.”166
The other side of the courtyard represents, for Jeffries especially, a mirror; these neighbors are a catalog of possibilities related to his own life—with or without Lisa. The reflection here corresponds to the people themselves; it is a dualism that Hitchcock had previously used in Shadow of a Doubt, in the symmetry of the two Charlies (uncle and niece), and in Strangers on a Train in the connection between Bruno and Guy. Here the theme is varied in its application. L.B. Jeffries, who is called Jeff, is in a relationship with a woman who wants to marry him at all costs. As Lisa enters Thorwald’s apartment and finds the wife’s wedding ring in a handbag, she slips it on and shows it behind her back, which Jeffries observes from the other side. It is a double hint from her side; the wife seems to have actually been killed, and she, Lisa, wants to marry him, Jeffries. Jeffries is the (presumably) positive protagonist. Lars Thorwald is married to a woman—who from a distance seems to be blonde, slender, and young, like Lisa—who increasingly nags him and of whom he wishes to be free. He is the negative antagonist. As Jeff, who otherwise travels the world as a professional photographer, is bound to a wheelchair and a sofa bed because of his broken leg, Lisa insists on caring for him. This is an exact reflection of what is going on across the way. Thorwald’s wife is sick and bedridden, just as he, a traveling businessman, is mobile and on the go. He now must care for his wife. Ultimately, Thorwald is Jeffries’s extreme alter ego. Jeffries’s observation of the Thorwalds and of the eventual murder functions as a projection of his primal fears.
If one chooses to see it thus, the apartment facade only exists in Jeffries’s imagination. Everything—the courtyard and the flats above—is a mental externalization. It represents an imaginary projection, an expression of yearnings and wishes on the one side, and of fears and darkness on the other. Thorwald carries out what Jeffries dares not do. His external immobility reflects his internal immobility, as when he asks Lisa if it would not just be best to leave everything as it is. The Thorwalds and Miss Lonelyhearts of this courtyard world, the lonely pianists and the newly married couple—these are all life options for Jeffries.
Grace Kelly first appears in Rear Window as a shadow during the fifteenth minute of the film. Evening is approaching. James Stewart sits in his wheelchair with his plaster cast and has dozed off. Sounds and voices can be heard from the street and the courtyard. A piano plays. A woman practices singing. The shouts of children echo up from the alley that leads from the street to the courtyard. Then suddenly, as if from nothing, silently and very slowly, Grace’s shadow stretches over him, and Stewart, as he senses her approach, opens his eyes. A dazed smile appears on his lips. Hitchcock builds the mood through the use of dreamlike imagery, which he later utilized to a fully avant-garde zenith in his film, Frenzy. Except for the muted, diffuse hum of the metropolis, suddenly nothing more can be heard from the courtyard. It is as if a length of wool has been laid around the couple, so that for a moment, nothing can acoustically disturb them. Through this, the sequence of pictures creates an even larger undertow. Hitchcock reveals this in an extremely color intensive (and color-restored) slow-motion sequence. Grace Kelly and James Stewart are each shown by the camera in close-up shots. First, Grace is seen from James Stewart’s perspective, frontally, bending down—to him and to us, the viewers—and thereby looking almost directly into the camera. And then, when their lips slowly touch and she kisses him three times, she is shown in profile. These camera takes are portraits of the creamy ivory of her face. Hitchcock “paints” Grace Kelly. In her black and white evening gown, designed by Edith Head, with a necklace of white pearls at her neck and her hair severely drawn back, she exudes a perfectly timeless, classical charm and elegance. It is as if this intimate moment has fallen out of all time and space. In this kiss scene, Hitchcock created one of the most beautiful, innocently poetic, and excitingly erotic kisses in film history.
Rear Window is, among other things, a precise treatment of the act of seeing—the staging of seeing. Thus, it is also about the role of the director, as well as the reaction to, and effect of, seeing. This is seeing and showing in their purest, nonverbal forms. It is not by chance that in Hitchcock’s courtyard, Bing Crosby’s rendition of “To See You (Is to Love You),” music by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Johnny Burke, is heard. This song addresses seeing and the (reciprocal) perception of the other. The song starts at the very moment that Lisa and Jeff begin talking about life in general, about their relationship and their differing views about it. If possible, this song—and even more so, the thematic “Lisa” melody—is also a hymn (Hitchcock’s) to the character of Lisa (and thus, the actress Grace Kelly). As Lisa stylishly sets out in Jeff’s apartment the perfect meal—at least perfect for him—that she had ordered from the fashionable 21 Club, Jeff looks across the parterre at the lonely, searching Miss Lonelyhearts. Crosby’s “To See You” is still playing.
In this context, the montage served Hitchcock as a significant design medium. (Hitchcock enjoyed talking about the critical influence on him exerted by the montage principle of the Russian directors Eisenstein and Pudowkin.)
“That’s it. [The montage] is the perfect cinematic tool. There is the immovable man who looks outside. This is the first piece of film. The second piece can show what the man sees, and the third shows his reaction. This represents the purest expression of a cinematic idea that we know.”167
As both a witty chamber play and a deeply transcendental kaleidoscope of the soul, Rear Window ends ambivalently. Jeffries lies dozing with two broken legs in his wheelchair. (Thorwald had previously threatened him and pushed him out of the window.) In blue pants and a red shirt, Lisa is not dressed in her usually elegant attire. She sits on the sofa, ostensibly reading a book, but as soon as Jeffries falls asleep, she grabs the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Which path (as exemplified by the different tenants across the courtyard) has the indecisive photographer decided? Hitchcock does not reveal this to the viewer.
Hitchcock’s fortieth film premiered in New York on August 4, 1954. Grace Kelly attended the event escorted by a certain Oleg Cassini. She appeared publicly with this man with whom she would have an on-again, off-again relationship from 1954 to 1955. It was a serious relationship that led to an engagement and concrete wedding plans.
The son of the Russian diplomat Count Alexander Loiewski and the Italian Countess Marguerite Cassini, Oleg Cassini (1913–2006) opened his own fashion house in Manhattan after settling in the United States in 1936 and serving military duty in the US army during World War II. Young First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (1929–1994) officially requested that he work as her personal couturier d
uring the years her husband John F. Kennedy served as President (1961–1963). Over these three short years, he created her unmistakable style, the so-called “Jackie Look,” and attended both private and social engagements with the Kennedys on the weekends. Jackie Kennedy’s geometric, plainly cut dresses—of which Cassini designed about three hundred for her—and the angular pillbox hats were copied by women around the world. Since 1941, Cassini had been married to the actress Gene Tierney (Laura, 1941), and in 1952, they divorced.
Cassini and Grace met each other at an event related to the New York premiere of Mogambo, which took place on October 1, 1953. According to Cassini, they actually first met in early 1954. However, the filming of Rear Window at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood did not end until January 13, and at its conclusion, Grace immediately started to work on director Mark Robson’s The Bridges at Toko-Ri, which had already begun filming without her on January 4.
Furthermore, on January 6, Grace Kelly made her final appearance in a television program. The Thankful Heart, a sixty-minute episode of Kraft Television Theatre, was broadcast live, as always, by NBC from New York.168 For this, Grace had to travel from Los Angeles to New York. It is not possible to date the meeting between Grace and Cassini any closer than this, although it could have possibly occurred on the day in January 1954 when Grace was in New York to film the live television program.
Usually Grace Kelly worked continuously, flying from one film set straight to another to begin a new project. Unsettled, restless, aspirational, ambitious. She wanted to become famous and successful, according to the people who knew her during this time, at all costs. The year 1954 was to be the most creative and stressful year of her career. Without a break, she made six movies within a span of thirteen months, between August 5, 1953, when the filming of Dial M for Murder began, to September 4, 1954, when the filming of To Catch a Thief ended. These movies included Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, The Country Girl, Green Fire, and finally To Catch a Thief. A film tour de force. This was an almost inconceivable acting achievement—not to mention a psychological and physical achievement as well. It required absolute composure, complete control, and iron discipline. Except for some Sundays, she was never free. Later, in recalling that time, she commented that she did not know how she survived.