First Draft Midterm Essay

The short story, “It Had to Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich was published in the year of 1942 that is about a man named Hal Jeffries or Jeff who is in a wheelchair with an undisclosed leg injury. In order to pass the time, occasionally he looks at his neighbor’s windows and he believes that his neighbor murdered his wife. Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of the short story “Rear Window” was released in 1954. By utilizing Linda Cahir’s three types of film translations: Radical, Literal, and Traditional, we can use it to see how accurate the film version is to the short story. Even though there are moments in the film version that are similar to the text version, the introduction of some characters, character swap and non-diegetic music makes the film a traditional translation.

The plot of the film, “Rear Window” stayed true to the short story, “ It Had to Be Murder”. In both, Jeff had the assumption that his neighbor murdered his wife. In the story Jeff hears a cricket chirping and his housekeeper Sam told him that it means that there is a death nearby. In the movie, the viewer is introduced to a character that was not in the text, Lisa. Both Lisa and Jeffries seem to be in a relationship of some sort and Jeff’s personal life comes more into light than in the story. Lisa visits Jeff in his apartment and Jeff told her that he believed that the neighbor murdered his wife. One could see that even though the main plot has stayed relatively the same, there is still some differences.

The switching of characters is involved in the movies. In the short story, Jeffries’ housekeeper is a male named Sam while in the movie, the person that is taking care of Jeffries is an older woman named Stella. Stella’s role is more of a nursing role rather than a housekeeper.

(Non diagetic) (Camera angles high angle shot of Jeffries that shows how inferior and fearful he is of Thorwald)