#38 Rear Window (Hitchcock) at Stanford Theatre
I can't watch Alfred Hitchcock films without thinking about Mr. Weesner, my high school video teacher.
But to reduce him to that --- my high school video teacher --- is woefully inadequate. Weesner was a dear family friend and my mentor. Over the decades we must have talked about hundreds of films. And we watched at least a dozen in his home theatre. I was a cocky kid, but he somehow delighted in my hot takes. (Years after his death, I finally watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of his favorites. "A sad, toxic depiction of male friendship," I would have told him. That would have made him laugh.) There is so much I want to say about the role he played in how I think about art --- how I think about myself --- but it all gives me a lump in my throat. After his death, I stopped seriously watching movies for years, unable to love or hate something without being overcome with the grief of never being able to talk to him about it.
But, boy did he love Hitchcock, so when Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto hosted a "Master of Suspense" summer series, I invited Weesner's best friend, my dad, to go. We picked Rear Window (1954) because I'd never seen it.
What struck me was how expertly Hitchcock portrays the protagonist's sense of being trapped while being stuck in a cast in his sweltering NYC apartment. (Not a hot take.) I didn't even realize the film was shot in one singular location as I was so thoroughly entertained. At times the film veered into the absurd: a bored, saggy-chested old man played by Jimmy Stewart somehow finds fault in the gorgeous young woman who's in love with him... a woman played by an actual princess, Grace Kelly. But perhaps that storyline is too real. I know some folks take issue with the ending: Stewart's character blinding his attacker with the flash of his camera. I suppose it is a bit laughable from the perspective of today's action scenes. But according to my dad, the flash bang ending was the most frightening thing he could remember seeing as a kid.
I wish I knew how Weesner felt about Rear Window. I'd bet he thought Grace Kelly was beautiful. I would want to ask him how the film stacked up against The Conversation, another masterful exploration of voyeurism. But at the end of the film, I turned to my dad with tears in my eyes and said, "I bet Weesner really loved this."