Alfred Hitchcock's "Apartment Trilogy"

Roman Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy" is quite famous: Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant. Alfred Hitchcock also made an "Apartment Trilogy," though I wonder if anyone thinks of them like one: Rope, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window.

These three films, made between 1948 and 1954, share two things in common: 1.) They all take place in one single apartment and take few to zero trips outside. 2.) The films center around the "perfect murder" and the eventual discovery of it. What is so fascinating about these three movies is that the way Hitchcock explores this single theme of the "perfect murder" is remarkably different in all three.

Rope is a character study about two murderers, one cocky and arrogant, the other hysterical and neurotic. Dial M for Murder is the anatomy--and deconstruction--of a murder. Finally, Rear Window is a love story between an amateur detective and his gal Friday. Some claim Rope and Dial M to be their favorites. In my opinion, however, Rear Window is the true masterpiece in the "trilogy."

All three of these films used their enclosed spaces to the different effect. In Rope, the apartment of Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger) serves as a space where wealthy intellectuals can mingle about nonsensically while a dead body is stuffed in a trunk. The location creates a sense of suspense--will a party guest open the trunk and figure out that Brandon and Phillip killed a man? There's also the morbid notion that the body is in the trunk on which the food is being served. This juxtaposition with horrific crime and the upper-class is quite common to Hitchcock. In many of his films (including the two others discussed in this blog), wealthy people are fascinated by murder.

Rope is also the weakest in the Hitchcock Apartment Trilogy. Since the murder happens right after the opening credits, there's just no suspense in the movie. For me, I couldn't find myself caring about whether or not Phillip and Brandon got caught or not because they're not empathetic at all. The two boys are elitist know-it-alls and I find their behavior during the dinner party frustrating. Of course, their main "antagonist" is played by James Stewart, an actor whose characters I always want to succeed. I find myself rooting for him to piece together the clues. Rope, though an interesting movie, is essentially a social experiment trying to pass as a Hitchcock thriller.

Second, we have Dial M for Murder, the first pairing of Hitchcock with his favorite actress Grace Kelly. Kelly plays Margot Wendice, the unhappy wife of ex-tennis star Tony (Ray Milland). Margot and Tony's apartment ritzy and fashionable, an ideal setting for Hitchcockian crime. The low angles add to the dread and claustrophobia. Like I said before, Dial M is about the planning and solving of a perfect murder. Tony's plot to kill Margot (she's cheating and he wants her insurance money) is full of many steps and months of preparation. Everything has to be just so and it almost works out for him...except Margot kills her attacker.

The second half of the movie involves Tony trying to evade getting pinned for planning all this. He does so by carefully undermining Margot's self-defense argument. How the murder plot is deconstructed forms the rest of the movie. Unlike Rope, there is a lot of suspense in this movie. The murder scene and the climax are effective and thrilling. But my main issue with Dial M is that there are too many scenes of talking and talking. The pre-climax scenes, when the Inspector is figuring out the case, can get a little tiresome, although that may be because I know how amazing the climax is. I had the pleasure of seeing Dial M on the big screen and in its original 3-D and the movie is just amazing. So my quibbles are minor in the long run.

Rear Window is I think one of Hitchcock's absolutely, 100% perfect films (the other two are Notorious and Vertigo) and that's because there's so much life to it. Each new viewing heralds something new and exciting. The mystery unfolds differently each time. Hitchcock's macabre sense of humor and delightful sense of romance fully come together to add spice to the claustrophobic thriller. Wheelchair-bound L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) and intelligent socialite Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) are a couple you can really root for; their love is true and empty of any psychodrama. The main plot of the movie has nothing to do with who killed the invalid neighbor--it's actually will Jeff and Lisa make it to marriage?

That's why Rear Window doesn't fall victim to the same issues that Rope and Dial M for Murder do. By treating the murder plot as an extended MacGuffin, there aren't any scenes of long explanations about who did what at what time and how that was a mistake. The "perfect murder" plot is there but it is seasoned with very fascinating character-based dialogue between Jeff and Lisa, Jeff and insurance company nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) and Jeff and useless detective Doyle (Wendell Corey). Jeff's neighborhood is also a vital part of the story as they add commentary to to the main story, which both detracts from and adds to the claustrophobia. Rear Window is really a masterpiece of storytelling because it tells two very distinct stories as one complete film.

So that's my take on what I consider to be Alfred Hitchcock's own "Apartment Trilogy." I think all three of them are important to Hitchcock and his place in cinema history. What fascinates me is that each of Hitchcock's films have their own champions who declare it his best ever. While I don't agree regarding Rope and Dial M for Murder, I do think that Rear Window is pure, classic Hitchcock.