- Day 24: A movie no one would expect you to love.
I thought the topic for today was ‘a recipe’, but when I checked, I discovered that is tomorrow’s topic. I had several ideas for a recipe, but hadn’t thought at all about ‘a movie no one would expect me to love’. So I had no ideas for a while, and thought about just going back up to my room and finishing my book, which I’d just spent three hours reading and still have about another one left. (I’ll write some more book reviews soon!)
But then I finally chose a movie. I really like it, but I don’t think anyone besides my family knows I like it.
Rear Window, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, is very suspenseful. It is not really gruesome, just scary because you’re not sure what the truth is. A photographer who broke his leg during a dangerous assignment is confined to a wheelchair in his apartment. His rear window looks out at other apartments, and to pass the time, he begins to watch his neighbors through their windows.
He sees a man and his wife have an argument, then notices after a while that the man’s wife is gone. The photographer sees the man cleaning a knife and a saw, then making multiple trips out of his apartment, carrying a suitcase each time. Later on, he suspects the man killed another neighbor’s dog to stop it from digging in the flowerbed and uncovering something. But what is buried there? For that matter, is anything buried there at all? What actually happened to the neighbor’s wife? Is the photographer just being paranoid?
This movie is old (1954), but proves that old movies aren’t boring. Don’t ignore it just because it is old; it is the most suspenseful movie I have seen yet. It may not be as gruesome as The Birds, but in a way, that makes it scarier. You don’t see much, which means all sorts of things could have happened.
Watch it!
Musings From Neville's Navel 