before and after marriage
DESCRIPTION
An Interpretive FotoNovela made using screenshots from Alred Hitchcock's Rear Window.TRANSCRIPT
LETSBEGIN.
PRANK
CALLHIM
LOVELET
TERS.
AND WRITE
I did
n’t k
now
thei
r
nam
es. I’d
nev
er
hear
d thei
r voi
c
es. I d
idn’t e
ve
n kn
ow th
em
by si
ght, s
t
rictly
spe
akin
g, f
or th
eir
face
s
wer
e to
o ‘
smal
l to
fil
l in
with
i
den
tifia
b
le fe
atur
es
at t
hat d
istan
ce. Y
et I
cou
ld
hav
e co
nstru
cte
d a ti
me
table
of
thei
r co
m
ings a
n
d g
oing
s,th
ei
r dai
ly h
abit
s
and a
ctiv
iti
es.
They
we
r
e th
e re
a
r-
win
dow
dwel
lers
ar
o
und m
e.
MAKE THEFIRST MOVE.
Sure, I suppose it was a little bit like prying, could even have been mistaken for the fevered concentration of a Peeping Tom. That wasn’t my fault, that wasn’t the idea. The idea was, my movements
my movements were strictly limited just around this ti me. I co uld get from
the bed to the windo w, and that was all. Th e bay window was about th e best featu re my rear bedroom ha d in the war m weather.
of exercise. I’d neve r acquired the habit of reading books towar d off boredom, so I hadn’t that to turn to. Well.
Yet I could have constructed
a timetable of their com
ings
and goings, their daily habits
and activities. They were the
rear-window
dwellers around m
e.
It was unscreened, so I had to sit with the light out or I wo uld have had every inse ct in the v icinity in on me. I couldn’t sleep, b ecause I was use
d to get ti ng plenty
of exercise. I’d neve r acquired the habit of reading books towar d off boredom, so I hadn’t that to turn to. Well.
GET INTO HIS MIND.
The third one down no longer offered any insight, the windows were just slits like in a medieval battlement, due to foreshortening. That brings us around to the one on the end. In that one, frontal vision came back full depth again, since it stood at right angles to the rest, my own included, sealing up the inner hollow all these houses backed on. I could see into it, from the rounded projection of my bay window, as freely as into a doll ho use with its rear wall sliced away. And scal e down to about the same size. It was a flat building. Unlike all the rest it had been constru cted originally as such, not just cut up into furnished roo ms. It topped them by two stor ies and had rear fire escapes, to show for this distinction. But it was old,
GET INTO HIS MIND.
ONCE
HEASKSYOUTOMARRY
HIM,evidently hadn’t shown a profit. It was in the process of being
ONCE
HEASKSYOUTOMARRY
HIM,evidently hadn’t shown a profit. It was in the process of being
BE PREPAREDTO PUT YOUR LIPSTICK ON,
AND EAT MEALS ALONE.
modernized. Instead of clearing
the entire building while the wo
rk was going on, they were doing
a flat at a time,
in order to lose
as little rental in
come as possibl
e. Of the six rearward flats it offe
red to view, the topmost one had
already been completed, but not y
et rented. They were working on t
he fifth-floor one now disturbing
the peace of everyone all up and
down the “inside” of the block wi
th their hammering and sawing. I
felt sorry for the couple in the flat
below. II used to wonder how they
SILENTLY SUCCUMB
TO DOMESTICVIOLENCE,
They were working on the fifth-floor one now, disturbing the peace of everyone all up and down the “inside” of the block with their hammering and sawing. I felt sorry for the couple in the flat below. I used to wonderhow they stood it with that bedlam going on above their heads.
THEN PLAY A SAD SONG ON LOOP.Then play a sad song on loop.
WATCH HIM INTHE ARMS OF
ANOTHERWOMAN.
Not that I sat watch ing all th at time. T he light wa s still burnin g at three i n the mor ning, wh
failed to, a nd hopscot ched back again arou nd dawn, i t was still p eering wan ly out beh ind the t
WATCH HIM INTHE ARMS OF YET
ANOTHERWOMAN.
Not that I sat watch ing all th at time. T he light wa s still burnin g at three i n the mor ning, wh
en I finally transferred from chair to bed to see if I co uld get a lit tle sleep m yself. And when I
an shade. Moments later, with the first brightening of day, it suddenly dimmed around the e
GET HURT. NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE.
GET HURT. NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE.
He was holding a ci garette in his ha nd. I couldn’t see it, but I could tell it was th at by the quick, nervous littl e jerks with which he kept putting his hand to his mouth, and the haze I saw rising around his head. Worried about her, I guess. I didn’t blame him for it that.
PILLS WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Any husband would only just dropped offlong suffering. &then so, at the most, that
clattering buckets over them again.
of my business, Ihe really ought
there. If I had
have been. She must
to sleep, after night
in another hour or
sawing of wood and
was going to start
Well, it wasn’t any
said to myself, but
to get her out of
an ill wife with me...
THINK POPPING
PILLS WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM.He was leaning slightly out,maybe an inch past the window frame, carefully scanning the back faces of all the houses abuttingon the hollow square that lay before him.
SCRATCHTHAT SILLY ITCHY
THOUGHTAWAY.
WELCOME OTHER MEN,You can tell, even at a distance, when a person is looking fixedly. There’s somethingabout the way the head is held. And yet his scrutiny wasn’t held fixedly to any one point, it was a slow, sweeping one, moving along houses on the opposite side from me first. When it got to the end of them, I knew it would cross over to my side and come back along there. Before it did, I withdrew several yards inside my room, to let it go safely by. I didn’t
A N D B R E A K H I S H E A R T .
want him to think I was sitting there prying into his affairs. There was still enough blue night-shade in my room to keep my slight withdrawal from catching his eye. When I returned to my original position a moment or two later, he was gone. He had raised two more of the shades. The bedroom one was still down. I wondered vaguely why he had given that peculiar, comprehensive, semicircular stare at all the rear windows around him. There wasn’t anyone at any of them.
THENCALLTHE
POLICEAND GETRID OF HIM.It wasn’t important, of course. It was just a little oddity,it failed to blend in with his being worried or disturbed about hiswife. When you’re w orried or disturbed, that’s an internal preoccupation, you stare vacantly at nothing at all.
nothing at all. When you stare around yo
u in a great s weeping arc at windows, that betrays external pre occupation, o
utward interest. One doesn
’t quite jibe wi th the other. T o call such a d iscrepancy trif ling is to add to its importa
nce. Only som eone like me, s tewing in a va
cuum of total idleness, would have noticed it at all.
THE ENDRear Window by Alfred Hitchcock
Interpretative Fotonovela by Ananya Singh
HOW TO TAME YOUR SPOUSE
Laid up with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his tiny, sweltering courtyard apartment. To pass the time between visits from his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his fashion model girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), the binocular-wielding Jeffries stares through the rear window of his apartment at the goings-on in the other apartments around his courtyard. As he spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.