Author: Alicia Bajana

Alicia Bajana

English 2400

October 20, 2020

“It Had to Be Murder” vs Rear Window

“It Had to Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich (1942) is a suspenseful and mysterious story about a man named Hal Jeffries, a temporarily disabled man, who spies on his neighbors as his past time but becomes involved in a murder investigation. Rear Window is the film adaptation of “It Had to Be Murder”. “It had to be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich (1942) vs. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) is a Traditional Translation because the text and the movie maintained the plot intact as well as the secondary characters that were important since they took part in the investigation. Lastly, the killer maintained the same in the reading as well as the film. Both works have similarities and differences that change the reader’s perspective and gives a new feel and appreciation to the short story.

One similarity is the murder of Mrs. Thorwald. This is the main plot of the story which puts intensity in the text and the film “The thought-message that sparked from the synchronization was: He’s done something to her!” (Woolrich). Like the movie, there was pitch silence while Jeffries just finished arguing with Lisa and 2 minutes later, the scream of a woman and shattered glass pops in. (Rear Window).  One difference is the accomplices of Jeffries in the investigation. In the text, Sam is portrayed as a single mid-age man with no family and comes around to take care of Jeffries. Unlike the film, they portray 2 accomplices which are Lisa and Stella. Lisa is the love interest of Jeffries which develops into a relationship towards the course of the investigation. Stella is the other accomplice but also has a close bond with Jeffries as a mother figure due to her age and her ways of taking care of Jeffries like a son. This similarity is important between the text and film because it is the developer of the story. In the text, the reader is able to feel the build-up of the suspense when Jeffries sends Mr. Thorwald the letter and Jeffries is able to see how his reaction proved his hypothesis about Mrs. Thorwald death (“Now here’s what I want you to do, and I want you to be slick about it. You take this, go in that building 525, climb the stairs to the fourth-floor rear, and ease it under the door. You’re fast, at least you used to be. Let’s see if you’re fast enough to keep from being caught at it. Then when you get safely down again, give the outside doorbell a little poke, to attract attention.”) “ It had to be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich. In the film, the viewer is able to see and feel the suspense building up through camera angles, the diegetic sounds of the surroundings, and the focal point of Mr. Thorwald’s face when reading the letter. The scene started with silence while Jeffries was writing the note to Thorwald and then the diegetic sounds of Jazz and background sound incorporated the scene giving a hint of a thriller while Lisa was walking to Thorward’s apartment to push the note under his door. Then, the camera angles focusing straight at the face of Throward while he reads the letter builds up the questioning of the viewer (Rear Window).

The second similarity is the temporary disability of Jeffries that brought him to spy on his neighbors and later on be a key point in the discovery of Mrs. Thorwald body “The idea was, my movements were strictly limited just around this time. I could get from the window to the bed, and from the bed to the window, and that was all” (Woolrich).

The second difference is the neighborhood layout. This similarity is extremely important to the reader and view because it is the reason as to how the whole story happens. It’s due to his inability to walk that tracked him into spying on his neighbors and discovering the horrifying truth about a killing. The difference important because for the reader it’s an imagery effect when the reader is imagining how everything looks as if they were Jeffries. In the text, the layout is described differently with more distance between each building and super spacious but, in the film, Jeffries can see straight into Thorwald’s entire apartment. All the apartment buildings are facing each other like a box with a multitude of people leaving in each apartment. The view not only sees the layout but is able to compare it to the real lifestyle of a New Yorker.

The third similarity is Jeffries’s friend detective, Boyne, who helps Jeffries in the whole investigation. The third difference is the profession of Jeffries. In the text, he never mentioned his work or who he worked for but in the film, he shows and expresses his profession as a Photographer. This similarity was crucial in the text and film because it put all the pieces of the puzzle together and gave the plot meaning. Therefore, the differences were just as crucial to the film by giving a new feel to the scene. This new feeling of terror from Jeffries to the quick thinking raised the bar on the ending scenes. Jeffries not only used his photography tools to spy on Thorwald and also gather evidence but also used them to save his life at the ending scene when Thorwald came after him to kill him. This scene was suspenseful and terrifying due to the use of darkness, silence, focal points on Thorwald’s eyes, and camera angles when Jeffries dropped from his window.

The main theme of this story is death and love which are two opposite feelings for the reader and viewer to take in. In the text, the theme of death is showed from the beginning to the end including symbols like the cricket indicating the death of someone. While everything unfolded the reader was able to feel a constant emotion throughout the story. However, the changes in the film incorporated a second emotion and theme which was love. Love became the beginning and the ending emotions of the film but Death was intensified in the middle like the plot. This is due to the inserting of Jeffries’s love interest- Lisa at the beginning of the film to the middle where she was part of the investigation and risked her life to get evidence for Jeffries to the end when they become a couple and Lisa takes care of him.

In conclusion, while the film is traditional and follows the short story faithfully; there are important differences and liberties that the film takes that is not part of the short story, which includes; changes in characters, added characters, and gender changes, and changes in lifestyles. These differences stand out in the film and change the short story in different ways. The text and film have taught me how important it is for the producer to stay true to the text because the minimal adjustment can change the whole feeling and narrative of the story. Lastly, the lesson I learned from the text/film is to be aware of my surroundings because the enemy can be closer than you think and we don’t know who can be watching.