Then a standoff.
‘What do you want from me?’
Nothing. Jefferies never wanted anything, he only wanted to be entertained. We only just wanted to be entertained. Why is he asking us this?
Thorwald keeps talking, letting us, the audience, know for sure that he is guilty. Jefferies is silent. After all, what has he go to say? ‘I’m a peeping tom and you gave me something to think about other than Miss Torso’?
Only when they discuss the wedding ring does Jefferies decide to answer. He always had an opinion about marriage.
Then comes the series of shots as the light bulbs flash. Wide of Thorwald, low of Jefferies, orange to red splash, close up of Thorwald rubbing his eyes. The colour reminds us of Robert Burks’ Technicolor opening and of his spectacular interior sunset.
Students laugh at this sequence, and Jefferies fall from his window, the special effects have aged, and the light bulb moment seems contrived. It is contrived. The sequence is there as a culmination of image, metaphor, symbol, character, theme and plot. It is silly but that doesn’t matter, we were never really worried about Jefferies. This is a comedy, remember?
Thorwald’s move towards us/Jefferies in the middle of the attack is the conclusion of those elements, a concentration of the elements in one split second.
The attack once again brings the neighbours out of their home, but this time it is a human being killed and not a dog. Even the honeymooners stop for a moment.
We move outside, following Doyle over to the window. We feel a sense of relief that we are no longer inside being attacked, no longer allied with Jefferies. Now we are once again watching. Our conscience is safe.
There is a moment when Doyle is thrown a gun but never uses is. This little nod to Chekov is one of the wittiest nods in the whole film. It reveals Hitchcock’s true intensions in this scene and in the film. He knows the rules but, really, will we bother with them now?
‘Thorwald’s ready to take us on a tour of the east river.’ How kind of him.
‘I don’t want any part of it.’
Stella gets all the best lines.
Thelma Ritter gives all the best looks.
The final shot replicates the first. Everything is back to normal. Everything has been tied up nicely. Couples are together.
Yet this isn’t really true now is it? Robin Wood says of the ending that ‘we are left with the feeling that the sweetness-and-light merely covers up that chaos-world that underlies the superficial order’.
At first it seems that all the couples are happy. But they’re not. Yes. Lonely-hearts and the songwriter are smiling. But what does their future hold? He gets very uptight when he writes and she gets very lonely on her own. And we don’t know for sure if his song will be a hit.
A new dog to replace the old. What is really missing here?
Miss Torso doesn’t seem to be too happy about the reaction from her returning boyfriend. He’s more interested in a beer than her.
And the honeymooners are having to face the harsh realities of married life. Do they end up the way of the Thorwalds?
You can give a murder scene a lick of paint, but it is still a murder scene.
The diegetic music plays ‘Lisa’, although it could be ‘Stella’.
The camera pans down Jefferies legs and then up Lisa’s. He’s trapped. More trapped than he ever was. She’s wearing the pants now.
Her final moment is to reveal that she is only pretending to read the book recommended by her older, sleepier, boyfriend before she returns to a publication more suited to her work.
She smiles.
What does she know that we don’t? How will this relationship end? She’s lying to him and smiling at his entrapment. The last look is hers. The tables have turned.
The blind comes down with a comedic flourish.
This, the end tells us, was a comedy, a comedy of grotesques. A comedy where we are being laughed at as much as the deplorable lead is being laughed at.
Is this simple entertainment or is it something more, something ‘literary’? Does it contain a neat message, or does it open up a Pandora’s Box of questions with every answer it tries to trick you with?
Nothing is answered in the film, everything is questioned. It is entertaining, students still laugh at all the jokes and sly innuendos, but it is also far cleverer than it lets on. If the film were a character it would be Lisa, with us, the audience, like a foolish Jefferies trying to keep up.
This is why Hitchcock is on the Leaving Cert and this is why there should always be a canonical film text to choose on the list of texts.
CinÉireann / March 2018 19
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