Rear Window Books

I just finished reading "Waltz into Darkness" about five minutes ago. I had to log on to write a review right away because it was so wonderful. Cornell Woolrich is the master of suspense.. it is impossible to put this book down. I tried to go away from the reading to savor the moment, but alas, I was drawn automatically back into reading. I had to know what would happen next!
"Waltz into Darkness" was the reason for my purchase of the book. I had seen the movie "Original Sin" and was rather taken with the plot, if not the movie itself. I discovered the "Cornell Woolrich Omnibus" and thought, well, why not?
Let me just say that I am so glad that I bought this book. I am an avid fan of James Ellroy, but other than that noir fiction was not known to me. Cornell Woolrich's writing was consistently well written, amazingly well-timed, and delivered in a manner that can only be compared with the likes of F.Scott Fitzgerald. (By the way, it has been said that Woolrich considered Fitzgerald an idol.)
Let's start at the beginning. The five short stories are so diverse. Everyone knows "Rear Window" because of it's Hitchcock fame. Very good, but let's not shun the others just because they are not well known. The best would HAVE to be "Three O'Clock." It has the heart racing and pulse quicking before one can get into the first few pages. The other stories are good.. I was also impressed with "Post-Mortem" and "Change of Murder." "Momentum" was the only one where I was put off by the ending.
The first novel was "I Married a Dead Man." Wow.. fabulous. It leaves you wondering what exactly happened, which normally bothers me beyond belief. However, this was done so well.. and IT COULD HAVE ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT THE TIME... which makes it all the more intriguing. In the middle of reading the novel I decided to research Woolrich, as a man. I was that taken with the book.
"Waltz into Darkness" was the longest section of the book. It isn't the same kind of novel- I would still classify it as noir, but it is a time piece that has alot more descriptive elements. I finished the book and all I could think was "THE TRAUMA OF IT ALL!!!" I wanted to go into the story and make things right for the main character (Durand.) It was a highly enjoyable experience, tragic though it may have been.
I would recommend this book to anyone with a brain who enjoys fiction that will keep you jumping. I am disappointed to know that I have nothing else to read that can possibly be as good now that I have finished the "Omnibus." If possible, I would rate this even higher than the five allotted stars.

If you haven't come across Cornell Woolrich before (or William Irish or George Hopley), you are in for a treat.

Oddly enough, for a "Woolrich Omnibus", two novels that were originally published as by William Irish have been selected, and, even then, two of his lesser novels under that pseudonym. Don't get me wrong - the two novels are good, but they are not among his best. The 5 short stories in the "Rear Window" section are all top-notch, however.

The most unfortunate thing about this collection is that all three sections, "I Married a Dead Man", "Waltz Into Darkness", and "Rear Window and other stories", were all available separately until recently, while other, more deserving novels and short story collections have been out-of-print for many years, and hundreds of Woolrich's short stories lie uncollected in old pulp magazines. Why not revive some of these rather than trying to sell the most recently available stories in a different format?

"I Married A Dead Man" is a story of a young, pregnant, penniless woman who is thrown out on the street by her child's father. When she is involved in a train accident that kills a rich young man and his pregnant wife, she is mistaken for the man's wife by his family and taken in by them. Her past, however, threatens to destroy both her new-found happiness and the people that she has come to care for.

"Waltz Into Darkness" is the story of a lonely man who tries to find companionship by proposing marriage to a pen-pal. When she arrives, however, she is beautiful and does not at all resemble her picture. In spite of questions about her and hints of dark doings, his love for her and his fear of being alone lead him to marry her, and set them both up for noir tragedy.

"Rear Window" is a collection of the 5 short stories by Woolrich that were filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, either for the movies or for television. Writing short stories is where Woolrich made his name, and t! his collection shows why. Four of the stories are very good, but one is among the best, if not The Best, of his over 200 stories: "Three O'Clock". This is a classic noir story that puts the reader into the skin of a man who decides, for no good reason, to kill his wife by setting a time bomb to blow her up. We follow him through his preparations, and are trapped with him when an unexpected occurence traps him with the bomb inaccessible, but only scant feet away from him. As the clock ticks closer to 3:00, the time the bomb is set for, we feel his desperation as he tries to somehow stop the destruction that he has set in motion.

For those of you who have never met him, let me introduce you to Cornell Woolrich, the greatest suspense writer of all time. He's cruel, he'll wring you dry, he'll pummell you physically and emotionally until you just about break down. And you'll never be able to get enough.

Now let me introduce you to the ONLY thing that is in print from this remarkable man, who wrote over twenty novels and a few hundred short stories... The Omnibus, which contains I MARRIED A DEAD MAN and WALTZ INTO DARKNESS, two of the last novels of his "main" period and both written under the psuedonym William Irish, and five short stories collected under the Title "Rear Window". I MARRIED A DEAD MAN is one of Woolrich's best: existentially terrifying, incredibly depressing, and wholly dependant on bizarre coincindences that you must just accept as being part of his cruel and mocking universe. WALTZ is a strange choice to include, since it uncharacteriscally takes place in a period setting (1880s Louisiana) and depends less on crime and suspense than his other works, but it is nonetheless captivating -- his dark view of life and love still sits at the helm, but this novel isn't representative of his work the way you would expect for inclusion in an "Omnibus".

As for the shorts, they are uniformally a strong group. "Change of Muder" and "Post-Mortem" are solid if not incredible, but they do show you what some of his typical magazine work was like. "Rear Window" (which was first published as "It Had To Be Murder") is still a great story, even if you've seen the movie a few hundred times. Woolrich keeps the action tense and clautrophobic they way no one else can. "Momentum" (first published as "Murder Always Gathers Momemtum") is a delirious action nightmare that outdoes Camus on the existential level (Woolrich is far far ahead of any French writer for existential despair -- and yet he's the one out of print, go figure!). It resembles another excellent story, "Dusk to Dawn" that Woolrich wrote a few years before.

And then there's "Three O'Clock". Oh God. God, what can I say about this story? Woolrich's biographer called it his greatest a work, and to read it is "to die a little." Be warned, this is a wrecking piece of prose, so tense and so frightening that you will never forget it, although you may try....

This collection is worth the price just for this short story alone.

Despite the fact that it doesn't blindside the reader the way that, say, The Bride Wore Black or The Black Angel blindside the reader, I Married A Dead Man is my favorite of Woolrich's novels. It has a doom in store for the central character that is more haunting and more ambiguous than the doom that awaits any of Woolrich's other protagaonists and it followed me around for days afterwards after I read it. Waltz in to Darkness isn't in the same league, but it is very good on it's own terms. Woolrich was trying to write a "mainstream" novel here, but his worldview seeps into every page. The stories in Rear Window and other stories are all first rate. "Three O'Clock" is a corker and "Post Mortem" has a premise you have to read to believe. The rest of Woolrich's output is stupidly out of print right now. I've been collecting it used, but some of the obscure stuff (Children of the Ritz, Strangler's Serenade, Death is My Dancing Partner) is either too expensive or just plain unavailable. I would love to see some enterprising publisher do "the complete Cornell Woolrich."

I discovered Cornell Woolrich twenty years ago, his dark, macarbre thrillers leaving me a terrified teen! With this in mind, the novels and short stories collected in the omnibus were 're-reads' for me, yet they still left me in a state of spellbound suspense. However, if you're looking for an 'Agatha Christie' type whodunnit where, by the final page, the killer is safely locked up and everyone has tea...Forget it. Woolrich's work is dark and truly haunting, leaving a thrillingly eerie aftertaste. I recommend this omnibus edition to fans of Film Noir and/or people who like to scare themselves silly!

Sometimes it's fun to go back 50 or 60 years for some good, clean, non-violent fun, and these two stories fit the bill. "Rear Window" was famously adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock--a mark of his genius is that he turned the hero's elderly "houseman" into Grace Kelly for the screen! "Three O'Clock" is a very well done psychological thriller--no matter that the story line is highly improbable.Why doesn't the wife report the burglary? And the answer to the mystery--it just never would have happened that way in real life. But never mind--this is not great literature, just entertaining listening, just the right length for a car journey.

Cornell Woolrich made his reputation writing short stories for the pulp magazines in the '30s and '40s. The two stories selected for the Audiotape presentation here are among his best. Keir Dullea does a wonderful job in bringing the stories to life and bringing out all the drama and suspense inherent in them.

"Rear Window" is the short story that formed the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's film of the same name. It is interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two (for example, Woolrich's protagonist remains relatively unknown to us, while we learn much about Hitchcock's version of him).

"Three O'Clock" is probably the best of the over 200 stories that Woolrich wrote. This is the noir story of a man who wants to kill his wife, even though he has no reason to. We are put into the skin of this man as he makes his preparations, and is ultimately trapped in his own machinations when an unforeseen circumstance places him across the room from the activated bomb, but unable to do anything to stop his destruction. We feel his mounting desperation and terror as 3:00, the time the bomb is set to explode, nears and he tries to somehow stop it.

Dullea's performance on both stories brings out the despair, the suspense, the excitement, that lie in the original stories for both. These audiotapes more ressemble the best of classic Old Time Radio theatre dramas than books-on-tape. It is hard to imagine better adaptations.

While Woolrich's fans await with great interest Tom Rienzi's forthcoming study of the way Hollywood changed, distorted or triangulated Woolrich's suspense plots (FROM PULP NOIR TO FILM NOIR), and of course the forthcoming edition of much "new" material including an unfinished novel (TONIGHT, SOMEWHERE IN NEW YORK), we go back to basics with this charming collection of bona fide haunters.

REAR WINDOW isn't the best story here, but its title might ring the most bells, due to the perdurable popularity of the Hitchcock film with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. Opinions are divided as to whether or not John Michael Hayes (Hitchcock's scenarist) improved Woolrich's fairly bare bones tale, but I think most agree that he got at some important Woolrich themes, the importance of looking, the humiliation of being (if only temporarily) disabled, the amazing multiplicity of the world, where right next to you might be a victim--or a killer. And Grace Kelly looked the way Cornell Woolrich wrote his women, like a gay man's idea of what a perfect woman should look like.

"I Won't Take a Minute" is really frightening, and imagine if you had never heard of the plot before, and it was still fresh in your mind! I see that the new Jodie Foster thriller FLIGHT PLAN will be a re-telling of this old story once more, and while I respect Foster as an actress, I doubt if FLIGHT PLAN will top the chills of "I Won't Take a Minute."

i liked this book because i liked the original

Cornell Woolrich was an extremely prolific short story writer and novelist during the 1930s ad 1940s. Much of his stories were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery magazine - the equivalent of literary junk food. Often his material is entertaining yet poor written and forgettable. The same goes for his novels (..although I loved his Waltz into Darkness).

In this collection of short stories, including Rear Window (made famous by the Hitchcock film), we have several stories about suspense and murder. I found most to be very average. Rear Window was actually quite disappointing; the film adaptation was much better. And one of the stories was actually the template of a Woolrich novel I read, Night Has A Thousand Eyes (..the novel is much better than the short story). But there are some jewels. These involve a mix of themes such as: a killer of dance hall hostesses, a murder of a milk bottle thief, and the final story involving a sadistic husband.

Bottom line: an eclectic mish-mash of murder and suspense. Hit and miss, sure. But recommended nonetheless.

After years of having only one small volume of Cornell Woolrich's short suspense stories in print, this new volume is a major cause for celebration. It collects 13 of his works ranging from his earliest pulp stories ("Dead on Her Feet") to his last, sparse years ("For the Rest of Her Life"). The contents will be familiar to Woolrich fans, who have been able to dig up many of these stories in old anthologies, but it is wonderful to have them in a clean new collection -- with a thrilling cover. And for those of you new to Woolrich, you are in for a treat. Settle back in your armchair and dim the lights...you're in for a terrifying ride. Woolrich can cram more tension, anguish, and despair into his noir nightmare tales than any other author living or dead. He practically invented the noir genre, and once you get a taste of his riveting work, you'll never get enough of it again.

This collection contains: "Rear Window", "I Won't Take a Minute", "Speak to Me of Death", "The Dancing Detective" (a.k.a. "Dime a Dance"), "The Light in the Window", "The Corpse Next Door", "You'll Never See Me Again", "The Screaming Laugh", "Dead on Her Feet", "Waltz", "The Book That Squealed", "Death Escapes the Eye", and "For the Rest of Her Life."

My personal favorite is the last, the story that originlly hooked me on Woolrich. It's a terrifying tale of a woman's attempt to escape an abusive relationship. There are many other classics here, such as "Death Escapes the Eye", a subtle tale about the death of love -- and maybe another death as well. "Dead on Her Feet" is a grim short about police brutality, and "I Won't Take a Minute" and "You'll Never See Me Again" deal in one of Woolrich's favorite subjects: the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of a loved one and the panicked and hopeless search for them. "Speak to Me of Death" is a wonderfully depressing meditation on the fear of death and the horrific power of fate. Woolrich later lengthened it into the novel _Night Has a Thousand Eyes_. "The Screaming Laugh", "Waltz", and "The Book That Squealed" are lesser works, but still classics of their genre.

And, of course, the title story isn't a classic for nothing: it's a chilling account of suspicion and entrapment in every way the equal of the Hitchcock film that followed it. The volume also contains a short but insightful introduction that explains how Woolrich's dismal life is mirrored in his fiction. Understanding Woolrich's personal nightmares is helpful in appreciating his fictional ones.

If you like mystery and suspense, or just plain great writing, BUY THIS BOOK. And tell all your friends to as well. We need more Woolrich in print. And be sure to purchase NIGHT AND FEAR, a new Woolrich collection.

BOTTOM LINE: an eclectic brew murder and suspense -- and some of the finest work you will read anywhere. It is NOT hit and miss. Every piece is a gem. This is NOT literary junk food. Woolrich is one of the masters of American literature, deserving of great respect. Recommended to everyone who reads.

The short story is a great form for Woolrich -- he deftly illustrates the trajectory of characters caught in a noir world in streamlined, hard-boiled prose. There are no Raymond Chandler-esque prose stylings here: Woolrich's style is closer to Dashiell Hammett's lean style. The title story, originally published as written by William Irish (a frequent Woolrich pseudonym), has grown famous thanks to the Hitchcock film starring Jimmy Stewart. Well-written, it varies only slightly from the film, and Woolrich's clean style lets the reader easily see how Hollywood was attracted to Woolrich's stories as launch pads for movies. But "Rear Window," while good, isn't really the best tale in this collection. The others better typify Woolrich's work -- inexplicable events made believable and inevitable in a noirish, claustrophobic world. This collection is a good introduction to any reader new to Woolrich.

A friend lent me this book. I couldn't put it down the first night I got it. Most of the stories are great, one or two were ok, not even good. I would recommend this book for anyone over forty, for me it brought fond memories of life of the late forties and early fifties. I know that most of you in your forties were not born until 1960 or later, but if you were like me most of the TV movies when we were kids were from that era. I especially like the Perry Mason story, Perry's discription in the book is very different from the TV Perry Mason. For now this is a book I look forward to re-reading on a long cold winter's night with a large cup of hot chocolate in front of a warm fire.

bore bore borING! if i COULD i wouldn't give this book any stars. the movie is GREAT but the book is just 3 scripts--1 is more detailed than the other, and one is more detailed than that! yawn . . .zzz . . . .zzzzzz. .zzzz. SERIOUSLY! DON'T WASTE YOUR PRECIOUS TIME AND MONEY! don't fall into the trap!

i really like "Rear Window" and i thought this would be about the MAKING OF THE MOVIE. All it was, was a script, a more detailed script, and a MORE detailed script. i wasted my money on it. :'( don't do the same!

p.s. if you WANT a detailed script, then get it.

Yawn! Stefan Sharff's shot by shot analysis of Hitchcock's work is painstakingly executed, and painful to the reader. Not that understanding a great work of art should require no work on the part of its audience but in this case simply having the the plot of a classic movie told repeatedly and then gone over shot by shot adds little to the discussion of a much discussed work. Also, as another review here noted, there are many errors in Mr. Sharff's re-telling of the movie, which could easily have been avoided. I ordered this book along with 'Writing with Hitchcock' by Steven DeRosa, which offers a fresh analysis of 'Rear Window' and tells the complete story of its making - that one I do recommend along with seeing the movie again.

"The Art Of Looking In Hitchcock's Rear Window" is a 196-page volume written by Stefan Sharff in 1997. For mega-fans of Alfred Hitchcock's much-heralded 1954 classic suspense movie, "Rear Window", this book can provide a fun way to pass some time.

This is very literally a "Movie in a book", with the emphasis on painstaking detail of every scene contained within the engrossing Hitchcock 115-minute flick.

Well, maybe I should have stopped short (above) of using the word "painstaking" to describe this volume. Because Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines "painstaking" as -- "diligent care and effort". While Sharff's work here might well be termed as "painstaking"; I'd also have to add that it's not painstaking enough!

I say this mainly due to the mountain of errors I found while perusing Chapter 4, entitled "Shot By Shot (With Timing And Dialogue)". This lengthy chapter of more than 70 pages purports to "provide the complete dialogue as heard in the film" (exact quote from the book). However, any die-hard fan of "Rear Window" (who has seen the film multiple times) will instantly recognize this "complete dialogue" claim to be vastly overstated.

There are HUGE chunks of dialogue missing from this "Shot-By-Shot" portion of the book. And an even greater number of mis-quotes from the film. I couldn't believe how much stuff was omitted here. On very nearly every page during this supposedly 'verbatim' text reference to every scene in the film I kept saying to myself -- "Nope. That's not exactly right either!". Or, on many other occasions, "Why has this line by Jefferies (or by Lisa Fremont) been left out here?".

One such blatant example of ignored dialogue occurs on page 123 of the book (during the description of an early scene between L.B. Jefferies (played by James Stewart) and Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly). .... After Lisa says "I don't care what you do for a living; I'd just like to be part of it somehow", the book just decides to cut out the next few lines for no apparent reason (which, as I mentioned, happens way too often during the course of this publication).

According to Sharff's text, the next line to be heard in the film (after the line spoken by Lisa that I just wrote above) is Jefferies saying: "Wait a minute" (a line which isn't in the movie AT ALL!).

What *should* have followed is a little more give-and-take between Lisa and "Jeff" at the end of this very good and well-done scene (a scene which has a poignant and bittersweet flavor to it). Lisa's next line is: "It's deflating to find out the only way I can be part of it is to take out a subscription to your magazine. I guess I'm not the girl I thought I was."

Jeff then comes back with: "Now, there's nothing wrong with you Lisa. You've got this town in the palm of your hand." To which Lisa responds: "Not quite it seems."

All of these lines I've mentioned are totally missing from this book's "Shot-By-Shot" chapter. Ridiculous! To leave out a word or two here or there is certainly understandable in a work like this one, where an entire movie script is being re-played in print form. But here, enormous hunks of important lines are cut out, willy-nilly!

Lisa's "magazine subscription" line, in fact, is a very clever line in the movie, both funny and sad at the same time. It's one of my favorite lines in this film. To omit it (and many others that follow) displays just plain carelessness and negligence on the part of the author, in my opinion. For, how difficult is it to get the lines correct for a publication like this? Just watch the movie beginning to end, and write down every word spoken. But this obviously wasn't done in this case. Curious. Most curious indeed.

Now, even though I frown at all the sloppy omissions and errors that prevail in this volume, it *is* still a fun book to browse through (for the many pictures if nothing else). A lot of the photos in the book are of subpar quality, being taken (I think) directly from a VHS video source, which doesn't really flatter the material (kind of blurry and non-detailed). There are, however, many excellent-quality photographs contained on these pages. The crystal-clear pics are (I think) mostly "publicity stills".

A few of these "production photos" (plus a bunch more) can also be found among the "Special Features" on the superlative "Rear Window" Collector's Edition DVD, produced by Universal Home Video.

Despite my negative comments above, I still like having this book in my collection (mainly because I enjoy behind-the-scenes stuff involving films directed by "The Master", Alfred Hitchcock).

If you pick up this item of bound printed matter, just don't expect it to be anywhere near comprehensive or complete in terms of a "word-for-word" account of the motion picture. Because it's far from earning that distinction.

Okay. So you're thinking about buying this book. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. However, what you really shouldn't do is base that decision on the number of stars it has or any of the stupid reviews found (most likely underneath mine). "Why?" do you ask. Pretty much becuase the reviews are all biased and not well thought out. I'm a filmmaker and appreicate a book like this in its truly in depth, detailed analysis of a great filmmaker's work - this being Rear Window. It's an analysis of the script and then a shot by shot analysis of the film, including images of the shots to help you visualize. If you are interested in this sort of thing, then by this book. Anyone fascinated by the art of the cinema can agree that it can be imperative in really discussing the use of camera by a director, particularly by Hitchcock, who was a master of such craft. It's one of the few books I can find that break the film down in this regard so well and with such conviction/detail. Its a truly great reference to find. ***Okay, now listen up. If you do decide to read any other reviews (mostly the stupid ones with only one star) then note how the writer of each review states that what they wanted was something about the making of the film or production itself. They didn't find that from the book b/c that's not what it's about, so they gave it a bad review. That's just dumb and ignorant. If they wanted that, then why did they buy the book in the first place. Sorry, this just makes me angry. You can't rate a book by what you thought you were getting, especially when the book backing says nothing about any sort of 'making of'. So, if this IS what you are looking for, then, fine - do yourself a favor - and buy a different book on the subject. If you want a book like the one I mentioned earlier, then stop reading this and purchase. Thank you.