[From Where the Sidewalk Ends (dir. Otto Preminger, 1950). Click for a much larger view.]
Here’s the reason I wanted to watch this movie again: the eerie image of a woman (Grayce Mills) in her basement apartment, drowsing in a chair as her radio plays classical music. As she will explain to police detectives, “I always sleep here since my husband died. It seems less lonely. Music helps me.”
Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle, who won an Academy Award for his work on Laura (1944), also directed by Preminger, also starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney.
Friday, August 19, 2022
A woman in a window
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comments: 2
I saw that movie years ago and remember just a vague sense of good photography.
Here, the light on the hat of the man looking in the window!
This scene reminds me of me in my new apartment--it's level with the sidewalk, with no lawn, so if I don't draw the curtains anyone could look in--and I can look out, which I love.
But anyway, I have this funny awareness that I am "the woman in the corner apartment" to the regular passers-by (lots of dog walkers, etc.).
--Fresca
I’ve always liked at least the idea of street-level and basement apartments (now, I’m told, euphemized into “garden-level”). I especially like Manhattan garden-level apartments with the big gate in front of the little area outside the door. Like a secret clubhouse!
The movie was at TCM, maybe still is, but you can find it at unofficial sources too. It’s terrific, not so much for the plot or the principals as for the atmospherics.
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