Rear View Window movie

Rear View Window

The movie Rear Window (1954) was debut at the Rivoli theater in New York, with over 2000 members of the social and entertainment world and United Nations members in the audience. A fundraiser for the American-Korean Society was held. Alfred Hitchcock for Paramount Pictures directed the film. The screenplay written by John Michael Hayes, was adapted from a short story or novelette, It Had To Be Murder (1942), by Cornell Woolrich (pen-name William Irish). The movie was a recipient of four Academy Awards nominations, best cinematography, best director, best screenplay and best sound, yet won no Oscar.

The story takes place in a world renowned photographer's apartment, Jeff (James Stewart), who is now in a wheelchair with casts on both legs after an accident. His incurable curiosity and voyeurism is the reason, we are told, that he was injured in the first place. This sets up the movie to be seen from Jeff's viewpoint throughout. He is a prisoner inside his apartment.

To amuse himself, he starts to look into his neighbors windows across the way. He becomes the cat sitting in the window, except this cat uses binoculars. The binoculars are much like the camera he uses in his profession to capture others in action whilst unaware of his lens. Here, the neighbors have no idea they are being spied on and listened to from a dark apartment across the way, Jeff's apartment.

Jeff is criticized by his girlfriend, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) and nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), for spying on people and getting involved in things that are private to his neighbors. His excuse? What else does he have to do?

One evening, his nosiness gets him involved in one of the neighbors marriages. He notices the wife is missing and he has not seen her for days. Jeff starts to imagine foul play. He draws Lisa and Stella into his suspicions. The investigation from the three takes flight as they start finding clues, spying and piecing things together that indeed make them question whether the neighbor's wife is on a trip out of town or foul play has taken place.

Alfred Hitchcock shoots the film totally from the perspective of the main character, Jeff. Who just happens to be a photographer, which gives Hitchcock the freedom to use sweeping shots and close-ups, etc. since the shots are from a photographers eye.

Hitchcock leads us on a journey with Jeff by showing us the small world from within his apartment that has become a murder mystery on the rise. With colors, sounds, lighting and well place scenes and shots, we are taken on a roller coaster ride of intrigue, human passions and questions. Where is the neighbors wife? Why is he acting so strangely?

It all leads the characters into an investigation which may get them arrested or worse yet, killed. All because a bored, injured photographer was looking out his rear window. Quite a thriller!

©2010 All Rights Reserved

THE MATRIX explained

The Matrix

The Matrix (March 31, 1999 ) movie is the first in a trilogy of films about a sci-fi spiritual computer world. Directed and written by Andy and Lana Wachowski, the film won 4 oscars, with another another 28 wins and 36 nominations. At the time, it was touted as being one of the best films ever made with special effects, costuming and talent. An intrical story line with deep spiritual messages on every level. This extremely thought provoking story takes us into the computer world of the matrix. The characters move through their lives and changes to see who and what they truly are becoming in their mortal and spiritual lives.

The One, Neo (Keanu Reeves), works as a software agent by day and a hacker by night. The dichotomy brings his battle from within into his spirituality. He feels a hole in his soul, his life that cannot be filled during the day or at night.

As he is spending another night alone, selling his hacker ware to the highest bidder, he gets a message from a stranger telling him to follow the white rabbit, a tattoo on the shoulder of one of his customers. while at the nightclub, he meets Trinity (Carrie - Anne Moss) who leaves him with a thought provoking message about where his life is leading.

While Neo is at work getting a brow beating from his boss, he gets a call from a stranger instructing him how to escape the new agent like strangers who have shown up to take him away. But Neo is caught anyway. In the process, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) and the others take him into a room to interrogate him. Once strange things happen in the interrogation, like his lips disappearing and his mouth being closed off, plus an insect being shot into his stomach, which he sees crawling under his skin, Neo realizes that things are not as they should be.

Trinity and the other fighters show up to save him and extract the insect, a probe to track him with. They fight off the agents and save Neo from his impending doom. Neo is still confused about why all this is happening to him. As Neo tries to leave, Trinity asks him, if he really wants to continue on the path he has been taking or if he is ready to take a chance, a risk and choose another path. He chooses another path.

They take Neo to Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) their fearless leader. Morpheus tells Neo about the matrix and how reality is really not true reality. He is asked to make a decision of staying where he is and choosing another path, a path of enlightenment, if you will. Once again, he has to make a choice, not knowing what the outcome will be, taking a risk to trust and believe in his own intuition.

Once Neo makes this decision, the viewer is taken on a whirlwind ride through the world of the computer matrix. All the dualing characters within the matrix battle it out to help "their" side win. Good again versus evil. Will evil eventually win or will the good in us all take over and battle against the evil inside us all? Will we all become thoughtless, emotionless programs in the matrix?

This film plays into many people’s basic religious and life beliefs. Dealing with where we come from, how we were created, how we live out our lives and where we will eventually go when we move on from one world to another. It brings in mainly christian beliefs, but also makes us aware that all religions have the same basic ideas. All are born out of the same basic beliefs. We may think we are separated and against one another, but we are truly a part of one person, one being, one mind.

Neo hears a still knowing voice at all times, telling him he is missing out on something. That “something” is the question that keeps him searching for the meaning of his life. He wants to fill up the hole inside his heart that just keeps growing as time passes. The same hole we all have, which is, "What is the meaning of life?" Or more poignantly, what is the meaning of my life in respect to the universe! This is the driving force throughout the movie. The questions will be answered at every level. And oh, what a ride it is!

©2010 All Rights Reserved