When watching Rear Window I came to realize that it is defiantly based off of the short story “It Had to be Murder”. The story of “it had to be Murder” is told more through Jeffries mind and view. The film is told from a further prospective it is less easy to connect with Jeffries. When movies are made from stories or books there is almost always small changes. In the story there is an assistant to Jefferies named Sam, in the movie there is Stella. Grace Kelly plays Jeffries girlfriend in the movie whereas there is no girlfriend in the short story. The movie portrays smaller stories in the big story with Jeffries’s neighbors, in the story there is no inclusion of that in the short story, or the importance is less, for example the women with the dog, the ballerina and Miss Lonely-heart. Towards the end of the story the plot was changed, lard tries to kill Jeffries in a different way. In the film Lars doesn’t die and ends up with two broken legs but in the story Jeffries does. The details shared here are ones that if just watching the movie wouldn’t pay attention to. The story and the movie are similar; Hitchcock does a great job with the film.
Another thought is it is great that the main character is a photographer; it allows him to look to his neighbor’s lives. Hitchcock uses the frame in frame to show the isolation between the neighbors. He also creates drama with all the scenes at night being the dramatic ones. The windows are dividers between characters.
Alex Fraioli 