The Window (1949)

The Window (1949) – A boy with a reputation for telling tall tales witnesses a murder, and no one will believe him!

Directed by Ted Tetzlaff                               Starring – Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy

While often categorized as film noir, I’d call this “near noir”.  There are elements here (though there is none of the standard sexual tension given that the lead character is nine years old), but it doesn’t quite come together for me.  That’s about the only short fall however.

One hot summer night in New York, a boy with an active imagination decides to sleep out on the fire escape to cool off.  When he wakes up at 2 AM he peeks through the blinds of the apartment above his and sees a man murdered before his eyes.  The filmmaker sets us up from the beginning with a quotation from “Aesop’s Fables” about the boy who cried wolf.

Bobby Driscoll was twelve when he made the movie (a role which contributed to him winning a Juvenile Oscar the following year).  He was a slated to be a juvenile star for Disney, and would appear in both “Song of the South” (Disney’s first movie to include live action) and “Treasure Island”.  Here he is surrounded by some solid character actors, but the movie is all his.  He does a wonderful job of carrying the weight.

Looking back at some of the reviews at the time, it’s interesting to see that the parental characters (Hale and Kennedy) are taken to task, even referred to as “evil” in one review.  Watching the movie 50+ years later, I don’t read those characters that way at all.  Paul Stewart’s character is delightfully evil with a very realistic feel to it.  But Mr. and Mrs. Woodry just feel like people who don’t quite know what to do with all that imagination bubbling up in their son.

The movie was a hit for Howard Hughes and his newly acquired RKO movie studio.  Sadly, Driscoll’s career would run out of steam by 1960 and he would die of a drug overdose before his 32nd birthday.

Why I Liked It – A cool change of pace with a believable kid as the lead character.

Why You Will Like It – A nicely paced, tense little thriller.

Rating – *** Worth A Look