David Lynch reacts to Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 masterpiece Rear Window. Source: The Filmosophers Apple: podcasts.apple.com/tw/podcast... Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6deaApP...
Is a main difference between them anyway Jefferies can't move, so we have to keep his point of view. Jeffrey goes beyond the wall of the "audience" position and take part in the mystery
It's great...you always like to keep your booze moving a little. Shaken, not stirred. Gets your drink colder, if there's ice in it. And those brandy glasses are so snug in your hands as you sip them. Swishing the brandy around gets that aroma going, ya know...
Hitch loved the high visual.endings. Stewart's drop off the balcony with no cuts..He did that in Sabotage. But my favorite is Strangers On A Train. The carousel at the end rips itself apart, flying into the onlookers. I saw that as a teenager and was beyond thrilled. Finally in 2012 I made my own film.
It must have been some time in the mid or late 80's when Vertigo and Rear Window were rereleased in theatres after being unavailable to see publicly for decades. Both were restored to their previous glory after decades of neglect and deterioration. I only got the opportunity to see Rear Window at the time. It was spectacular. That set is something to see, especially on a big screen and has a 3D quality. I wish I could have seen Vertigo but both were given a very limited engagement. I wouldn't see Vertigo until much later. I'd rank Rear Window among my favorite Hitchcock films.
What he's talking about is the psychological aspect of feeling like the setting is in your living room and your living room is in the setting. It's the framing, the distance from the windows. It's all within reach and everything that's said in that apt is like inside the mind of someone. Intimacy in film is hard to achieve sometimes because it is a physical creation and the drama must fulfill that need for what has been set up by the physical characteristics to complete the outcome.
@@sebastianbjork1974 I certainly wouldn't call this a terrible ending. Terrible, to me, would mean it would significantly redact from the quality of the film. It's a tame ending, but I can live with it very well, since Rear Window is possibly my favourite film I've ever seen. At least one of them.
I like the ending too, but it doesn't surprise me at all that it doesn't satisfy Lynch. Were he making that movie, I'm sure the ending would have been more elliptical.
He is right about those gin glasses, drives me crazy too ; ) Also the scene where Jimmy Stewart for no reason decide to whisper on the phone talking to Tom Doyle at the end.
I know what he’s talking about regarding that cozy, sort of crows nest position the main character is put in here It’s also so easy for the audience to relate to Jimmy Stewart’s character here because he’s in the same passive observer position we are throughout most of the movie. We the audience are screaming at the screen, just as Jimmy Stewart’s character is screaming from his wheelchair
"Rear Window" is one of my two favorite movies of all time. I have to say Lynch's two criticisms are legitimate but particularly his issue with the movie's climax. The sped up footage looks silly and the whole scene in fact is rushed. It was always Hitch's direction of the great cast and the subtext of the screenplay that did it for me.
Without moving from the same setting, Hitchcock reaches some of the most intense moments in the thriller genre ever. The key is to have us in the position of the James Stewart character from beginning to end: we can only watch, but never act (of course, he is the audience of a movie or a play that's happening in real life) The ending, unfortunately, should have been tragic, not happy
I remember watching this with my mom. Crazy good movie. Also remember the Simpsons episode based on it, where Bart witnesses Maude's "murder" by Flanders.
I think what i liked most about Rear Window was the way that the observer becomes the observed, and that Jimmy Stewart's character is foreshadowed in the very first panning shot of the script. Everything is all there about who he is, what he stands for, and what he's in for, all while he dreams. He wakes and the little automotons, like a swiss clock start up their places, and the film begins its compartments. Really, it's Pascal's watch argument if I've ever seen one, perfect, ordered universe in the chaos.
@@tlinn8524 by "tumbler" he's referring to the glasses that they are drinking brandy or Cognac out of in the film, and they seemed to be constantly swirling the spirits around in the glass. In my experience, one might swirl the spirit around in the glass briefly to agitate it just before nosing it or to see the "legs" of the spirit on the glass as it settles back down, but to do this constantly as your walking around with the glass is odd. And the fact that they all seem to do it nonstop in the film seems contrived. At least that's my take on the subject. Haha! Cheers!
I wasn't aware of the influence of this film when I introduced my main character in my short noir. Or 2001. But It's there. On youtube as Bum Rap Andre Hunt.
It's such an amazing idea for a film, and because it's so its own thing and original you could never really do something like this again without people just saying it rips off Rear Window.
I don't know what exactly he doesn't like about the ending, but the big orange circles that attack Raymond Burr have always been the biggest flaw to me.
Love Lynch, but I'm surprised he found fault with Rear Window's ending - it's exactly the sort of hokiness he went for with the "all's right with the world" endings of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Inland Empire.
I think there was some competition between Welles and Hitch. Even back then, people would say Hitch and John Ford were better in the 1930s compared to their new movies. Also, Hitch somehow had an ability to upstage William Castle, Fritz Lang and Welles. Example, Touch of Evil has moments that foreshadow Psycho. Yet TOE was easily discarded. Welles also put down Nicholas Ray. I love em all
I've also heard Welles talk ill of Bergman (very articulately and entertainingly). He was a genius, but was either subject to very specific tastes or was a little bitter at others being permitted freedoms and accolades rarely bestowed to him.
How much is the criticism of Hitchcock by Welles and (much later) Tarantino fuelled by resentment over the fact that Hitchcock was able to succeed throughout the Hays Code?
I love this movie. It’s something I like to play on my TV, on loop, for background ambience. I’ve seen it countless times and it truly is a masterpiece. However, my one criticism is that the love interest (Grace Kelly) was way out of James Stewart’s league. Grace Kelly was smart, gorgeous, desired, and basically begging to get in to Jimmy Stewart’s pants the entire movie. Stewart has a number of physical and mental health issues. He is stuck in a wheelchair, he’s about 20 ears older than her, and he’s going to reject this blonde beauty on multiple occasions? Does he have someone better lined up?
The only reason why the movie is not perfect in my eyes is because the villain killed the dog. As an animal lover I wish there was another solution. Otherwise I don't have any complaints. Would also have liked if Lynch had shared with us what he would have done to make the ending perfect.
Godard is boring as fuck. Would rather watch Tarantino's worst, Death Proof, over the so called masterpiece Breathless. Tarantino's obviously wrong about Lynch though if he still hates Lynch films
There is Godard I love and Godard I can’t stand. Everyone can be criticized. Even if the majority love a film, some won’t enjoy it and their criticism is no less valid than the praise. We just tend to exaggerate one person’s opinion over others because they may be successful (or a celebrity). In the end, it’s just an opinion. No matter how well informed that person may be they still have their own biases because no one can be 100% objective, there’s always a subjective component.
He doesn't like specifics, he likes mood, feeling, themes, aesthetics, and he hates explaining things because I think he thinks that if he thinks too hard about something it will ruin it.
I can see the influence of Rear Window on several of Lynch’s small town films/TV series. But for Hitchcock the villain of Rear Window is from an aberrant individual. The rest of the apartment dwellers are a slice of life in the US and Hitch is sympathetic to them. * Imo Lynch is repelled by the limited affect of evil in Hitch’s film. Evil cannot be defeated by flashbulbs in Lynch’s mind! Evil is everywhere to Lynch. It can come in a sleepy town from a criminal gang led by a psychopath (Blue Velvet). It can come from a father who is possessed by evil (Twin Peaks). It can come from a want to be starlet trying to make it in Hollywood (Mulholland Drive). Evil is next door. It is within the person (Lost Highway). * Hitchcock could touch on that noir sensibility of a dispersed evil with Strangers on a Train, Vertigo and The Birds. More often he has evil being completely defeated (North by Northwest).
@@bb1111116 Great comment. This paranoid obsession with evil lurking everywhere is one of the reasons I find Lynch so horrific. His films are truly nightmarish (except The Straight Story, ofc). It's also why for as much as I admire him (he is one of the greats), he will never quite be among my favourite filmmakers. I think the idea of Evil being overcome by the power of the light and the camera itself in the climax of Rear Window is fitting and righteous, but the execution is weak and dated
The aesthetics of rear window are beyond perfect, theres something very special and mystical about it thats never been replicated
that's
@@HansDelbruck53troglodyte
@@charliekill88 Educated troglodyte, I'll have you know.
Exorcist as well. This and exorcist have a mystical element that no other movie has been able to create
I would argue "eyes wide shut". Very mystical movie..almost dreamlike throughout@@matthewmccarty4892
I have this feeling Lynch told more about his cinema while talking about The Rear Window than in any other interview about his own movies.
"keep those tumblers going" lol, I love the way that David Lynch talks.
I didn't understand what he meant by it.
@@reev9759he meant that he could see that Hitchcock was directing the actors to keep their drink glasses moving. It is unnatural and weird.
@@hanspecans a tumbler is a drink glass?
Only now am I seeing the parallel of Rear Window and Blue Velvet.
Is a main difference between them anyway
Jefferies can't move, so we have to keep his point of view. Jeffrey goes beyond the wall of the "audience" position and take part in the mystery
Yeah. That’s interesting. It’s like Jefferies was watching several tv shows at one. All the windows tvs
i saw both films within a few months when i was mid teens and the pervy voyeurism connection was very clear
@@sleuthentertainment5872 yes
Scotty has more free will than Jeffrey
The "tumbler" detail is what makes it.
It's great...you always like to keep your booze moving a little. Shaken, not stirred. Gets your drink colder, if there's ice in it. And those brandy glasses are so snug in your hands as you sip them. Swishing the brandy around gets that aroma going, ya know...
I could listen to David Lynch talk all day!
Hitch loved the high visual.endings. Stewart's drop off the balcony with no cuts..He did that in Sabotage. But my favorite is Strangers On A Train. The carousel at the end rips itself apart, flying into the onlookers. I saw that as a teenager and was beyond thrilled. Finally in 2012 I made my own film.
It must have been some time in the mid or late 80's when Vertigo and Rear Window were rereleased in theatres after being unavailable to see publicly for decades. Both were restored to their previous glory after decades of neglect and deterioration. I only got the opportunity to see Rear Window at the time. It was spectacular. That set is something to see, especially on a big screen and has a 3D quality. I wish I could have seen Vertigo but both were given a very limited engagement. I wouldn't see Vertigo until much later. I'd rank Rear Window among my favorite Hitchcock films.
Great analysis. I prefer opinions of filmmakers to critics.
"I've always loved Princess Grace. Rear Window, It's COZY- it's a Little Bitty, Little Bitty Toaster Cozy World".
What he's talking about is the psychological aspect of feeling like the setting is in your living room and your living room is in the setting. It's the framing, the distance from the windows. It's all within reach and everything that's said in that apt is like inside the mind of someone. Intimacy in film is hard to achieve sometimes because it is a physical creation and the drama must fulfill that need for what has been set up by the physical characteristics to complete the outcome.
Never heard anyone complain about the ending until now. The ending is perfect.
Vertigo has a perfect ending. Most Hitchcock films have terrible endings (because of censorship of course) this one included.
@@sebastianbjork1974 I certainly wouldn't call this a terrible ending. Terrible, to me, would mean it would significantly redact from the quality of the film. It's a tame ending, but I can live with it very well, since Rear Window is possibly my favourite film I've ever seen. At least one of them.
I like the ending too, but it doesn't surprise me at all that it doesn't satisfy Lynch. Were he making that movie, I'm sure the ending would have been more elliptical.
@@sebastianbjork1974a freaky man, definitely born in the wrong time.
He is right about those gin glasses, drives me crazy too ; ) Also the scene where Jimmy Stewart for no reason decide to whisper on the phone talking to Tom Doyle at the end.
COZY. That perfect description...
I know what he’s talking about regarding that cozy, sort of crows nest position the main character is put in here
It’s also so easy for the audience to relate to Jimmy Stewart’s character here because he’s in the same passive observer position we are throughout most of the movie. We the audience are screaming at the screen, just as Jimmy Stewart’s character is screaming from his wheelchair
I never thought of that. It's true! We are helplessly watching along with him.
"Rear Window" is one of my two favorite movies of all time. I have to say Lynch's two criticisms are legitimate but particularly his issue with the movie's climax. The sped up footage looks silly and the whole scene in fact is rushed. It was always Hitch's direction of the great cast and the subtext of the screenplay that did it for me.
Without moving from the same setting, Hitchcock reaches some of the most intense moments in the thriller genre ever. The key is to have us in the position of the James Stewart character from beginning to end: we can only watch, but never act (of course, he is the audience of a movie or a play that's happening in real life)
The ending, unfortunately, should have been tragic, not happy
Do you know if that is the way that David Lynch wanted it to end?
Your channel is amazing
Excellent thanks for sharing
One of my favorite movies ever
For me, Hitchcock hit pure gold with "Real Window" and "Rope". Two of my all-time favorite movies.
It's a perfect screen play for a perfect concept.
I loved the ending but I also love Lynch's take on things.
"Cosy" is a great way to describe it. It's like a sitcom.
Hitchcock and Lynch otherworldly film figures!
Cozy thriller is exactly right
I remember watching this with my mom. Crazy good movie. Also remember the Simpsons episode based on it, where Bart witnesses Maude's "murder" by Flanders.
I think what i liked most about Rear Window was the way that the observer becomes the observed, and that Jimmy Stewart's character is foreshadowed in the very first panning shot of the script. Everything is all there about who he is, what he stands for, and what he's in for, all while he dreams. He wakes and the little automotons, like a swiss clock start up their places, and the film begins its compartments.
Really, it's Pascal's watch argument if I've ever seen one, perfect, ordered universe in the chaos.
Fav Hitchcock movie.
I was watching this movie a month ago. Still great.
Aaaah. I never made the connection, how REAR WINDOW was an obvious influence on BLUE VELVET.
❤❤❤ this movie
If any Hitchcock fan here hasn't seen his movie "Shadow of a doubt", do yourself a favor.
Now I need to watch it again for tumblers ❤
What does he mean by this
@@tlinn8524 by "tumbler" he's referring to the glasses that they are drinking brandy or Cognac out of in the film, and they seemed to be constantly swirling the spirits around in the glass. In my experience, one might swirl the spirit around in the glass briefly to agitate it just before nosing it or to see the "legs" of the spirit on the glass as it settles back down, but to do this constantly as your walking around with the glass is odd. And the fact that they all seem to do it nonstop in the film seems contrived. At least that's my take on the subject. Haha! Cheers!
I wasn't aware of the influence of this film when I introduced my main character in my short noir. Or 2001.
But It's there. On youtube as Bum Rap Andre Hunt.
It's such an amazing idea for a film, and because it's so its own thing and original you could never really do something like this again without people just saying it rips off Rear Window.
I don't drink Brandy so I thought that's how you were supposed to drink it, by keeping it moving all the time
He's right, it is a cozy film. you want to hang out and drink brandy with Grace.
I feel the same way about Blue Velvet
wow
C O Z Y
I completely agree with him including the ending.
David Lynch calling something in a movie “too hokey” is pretty funny in itself.
"Princess Grace" I👏🏻K👏🏻T👏🏻R👏🏻
I’m not a fan of the ending either. It felt as though the studio got in his ear and asked for a cliched bow on top.
I don't know what exactly he doesn't like about the ending, but the big orange circles that attack Raymond Burr have always been the biggest flaw to me.
Love Lynch, but I'm surprised he found fault with Rear Window's ending - it's exactly the sort of hokiness he went for with the "all's right with the world" endings of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Inland Empire.
Only Lynch would notice the spinning tumblers 😂
Thank you Mr Lynch, . He was good in rear window but in another Hitchcock film, I thought Jimmy Stuart was a bad choice in the Rope
And to think that killer would go on to be the world best lawyer.
I've seen Rear Window 4 times and I, honestly, can't remember the ending. I know Raymond Burr gets caught, somehow. That's about it.
Funny, I read a quote yesterday from Welles about how much he hated this film.
I think there was some competition between Welles and Hitch. Even back then, people would say Hitch and John Ford were better in the 1930s compared to their new movies.
Also, Hitch somehow had an ability to upstage William Castle, Fritz Lang and Welles. Example, Touch of Evil has moments that foreshadow Psycho. Yet TOE was easily discarded.
Welles also put down Nicholas Ray.
I love em all
I've also heard Welles talk ill of Bergman (very articulately and entertainingly). He was a genius, but was either subject to very specific tastes or was a little bitter at others being permitted freedoms and accolades rarely bestowed to him.
How much is the criticism of Hitchcock by Welles and (much later) Tarantino fuelled by resentment over the fact that Hitchcock was able to succeed throughout the Hays Code?
Wells supposedly inferior 'noir' films are better than ALOT from that genre.
@lowequayshush4308 absolutely!
Charlize Theron today reminds me of Grace Kelly..
I love this movie. It’s something I like to play on my TV, on loop, for background ambience. I’ve seen it countless times and it truly is a masterpiece. However, my one criticism is that the love interest (Grace Kelly) was way out of James Stewart’s league. Grace Kelly was smart, gorgeous, desired, and basically begging to get in to Jimmy Stewart’s pants the entire movie. Stewart has a number of physical and mental health issues. He is stuck in a wheelchair, he’s about 20 ears older than her, and he’s going to reject this blonde beauty on multiple occasions? Does he have someone better lined up?
Rear Window is sociological, Blue Velvet is psychological.
He doesn’t like happy endings
The only reason why the movie is not perfect in my eyes is because the villain killed the dog. As an animal lover I wish there was another solution. Otherwise I don't have any complaints.
Would also have liked if Lynch had shared with us what he would have done to make the ending perfect.
As entertaining and clever as Hitchcock's 50s Technicolor films are, I've always favored his earlier films.
Him criticizing Hitchcock is like a mouse critiquing a lion, it's the most preposterous thing ever.
"seemed artificial" is a hilarious critique coming from David Lynch lol
Lynch cinema is everything but artificial, boy
We need more of Lynch and less of tha loudmouth Tarantino who had the audacity to criticize Godard
get a life yo🤣
Godard is boring as fuck. Would rather watch Tarantino's worst, Death Proof, over the so called masterpiece Breathless. Tarantino's obviously wrong about Lynch though if he still hates Lynch films
and Anderson
@@thebossman80s Original at making unwatchable bland films. Also, Truffaut was before him and even wrote his supposed masterpiece (which is overrated)
There is Godard I love and Godard I can’t stand. Everyone can be criticized. Even if the majority love a film, some won’t enjoy it and their criticism is no less valid than the praise. We just tend to exaggerate one person’s opinion over others because they may be successful (or a celebrity).
In the end, it’s just an opinion. No matter how well informed that person may be they still have their own biases because no one can be 100% objective, there’s always a subjective component.
thank god Dave makes films cuz he is terrible at translating his thoughts into words lmao
He doesn't like specifics, he likes mood, feeling, themes, aesthetics, and he hates explaining things because I think he thinks that if he thinks too hard about something it will ruin it.
Lynch is perfectly clear and concise in this video about why he likes Rear Window.
I can see the influence of Rear Window on several of Lynch’s small town films/TV series. But for Hitchcock the villain of Rear Window is from an aberrant individual. The rest of the apartment dwellers are a slice of life in the US and Hitch is sympathetic to them.
* Imo Lynch is repelled by the limited affect of evil in Hitch’s film. Evil cannot be defeated by flashbulbs in Lynch’s mind! Evil is everywhere to Lynch. It can come in a sleepy town from a criminal gang led by a psychopath (Blue Velvet). It can come from a father who is possessed by evil (Twin Peaks). It can come from a want to be starlet trying to make it in Hollywood (Mulholland Drive). Evil is next door. It is within the person (Lost Highway).
* Hitchcock could touch on that noir sensibility of a dispersed evil with Strangers on a Train, Vertigo and The Birds. More often he has evil being completely defeated (North by Northwest).
@@bb1111116 Great comment. This paranoid obsession with evil lurking everywhere is one of the reasons I find Lynch so horrific. His films are truly nightmarish (except The Straight Story, ofc). It's also why for as much as I admire him (he is one of the greats), he will never quite be among my favourite filmmakers.
I think the idea of Evil being overcome by the power of the light and the camera itself in the climax of Rear Window is fitting and righteous, but the execution is weak and dated
Do not give a single stih about anything DL has to say about anything.
well u came to the right place
One of the best movies ever made. But you've got to squint to see the foreboding sense that zombies will be coming through the window🪟 ❤😂