Rear Window Twist

The lure of popcorn and a summer holiday matinee of my all-time favourite film, Rear Window (1954), playing at the Lido Cinema in Hawthorn proved irresistible a few weeks back. My dear friend Rebecca and her ten-year-old daughter, Anna, came along with me. They were seeing the movie for the first time.    

Rebecca and I discussed the suitability of a ten-year-old watching a film containing themes of domestic violence, attempted suicide and murder. As the old classics are wont to do, we decided most of these themes are obliquely referenced in the story, and Anna’s questions and making sense of the world is something to be encouraged. She has a natural curiosity about the world, a growing love of history and was recently introduced to the name of Alfred Hitchcock as a director of classic old films.

I couldn’t help but notice the distinct parallels between this film and a love of history: people watching, mulling over details, looking for clues, listening to stories, straining to catch snippets, unbridled curiosity, and the inevitable frustration with dead ends. An ideal, grown up film for young Anna, tapping into her growing interests.

Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954)

If you haven’t seen it, Rear Window is about a professional photographer convalescing in his apartment with a broken leg. Confined to a wheelchair with plaster cast from hip to toe, he is forced to observe the daily minutiae of his neighbours’ lives over the slow hours of incapacity. Over time he notices sinister behaviour by a neighbour and seeks to uncover the truth. I revel in the details. Jimmy Stewart’s depiction of the tension and guilt of watching his neighbours evokes an etiquette from a bygone era. I love the juxtaposition of the steaming New York heat against the icy cool Parisian dresses worn by Grace Kelly’s character.  The portrayals of subtle emotion and pithy dialogue resonates strongly with me, and I have always adored the doll’s house-like quality of the film set modelled on a Greenwich Village courtyard.

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When I was telling my father, who grew up in Hawthorn, about the movie, he told me the Lido Cinema is located in an arcade formerly known as “The Glen” and the Coles supermarket a few doors down was built on the site of the “Palace Theatre”.  I peppered him for more details about his favourite film (he couldn’t decide) and what his childhood cinema experience entailed. He said that he didn’t go to the cinema often, many screenings were shown as a series requiring weekly visits.  However, he vividly remembered his first time at the cinema in the evening!

New Palace Picture Theatre, Glenferrie c.1909-1940. Held by SLV H41.233/3.

Going to the cinema in 1949

His uncle, Roy Donovan, took him and his mother, Dorothy, to the Balwyn Cinema to see Oliver Twist (1948) in 1949. My father was 8 years old.  Despite the seventy-two years since he saw that movie, his retelling of this story gave me no doubt that it made a strong impression on him.  With eyes wide open, as if teleported to this place in his memory, he said “Fagin the old man was teaching boys, my age, to steal!” He accurately recalled the year, based on when his Uncle Roy got a car, a white Vauxhall in 1949.

Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn c.1954. Held by SLV H32492/8386.

Oliver Twist premiered in Melbourne at the Regent Theatre on Friday 21 January 1949. It had rave reviews. The Age wrote, ‘There are portraits in the film — one refers particularly to Fagin and Bill Sikes — that are startling in their intensity. So much so that they are bound to haunt the memory of the imaginative long after leaving the theatre.’[1] The Argus also declared the headline “Dicken’s Film Impressive”, heaping praise on the acting, ‘the entire cast is chosen with the perfection one always associates with the better-class British production’.[2] However, the film was not without controversy.

Overseas, particularly in Germany and New York, anti-Semitism protests (and rioting in some cases) broke out in response to the portrayal of Fagin as a Jew.[3] In Australia, it was a different kind of outrage, the suitability of the film for children.  The Chief Censor, Mr J. O. Alexander of the Commonwealth Film Censorship Board, deemed the film unsuitable for children, suggesting that ‘youngsters probably would learn more by seeing the picture than by reading the book and would obtain a fuller version of the workings of pick-pockets and other petty thieves.’[4] Teachers and Librarians were sceptical of this justification as most school libraries held the books which contained detailed descriptions of picking pockets and other misdemeanours.  The Regent Theatre incorporated the controversy in its marketing to sell the film in its fourth week, ‘Positively the most discussed film of a decade!’ and letters to the editor were plentiful, arguing for and against the classification.

Regent Theatre advertisement in the amusement columns in The Argus, 12 February 1949, page 37.

Balwyn’s Time Cinema

My father thought that he saw the film at the Balwyn Theatre, which still operates as a cinema today. However, after much sifting, sorting and comparing theatre listings in the online newspapers, it is evident that he saw the film at the now demolished Hoyts Time Theatre. The Hoyts Time Theatre opened at the eastern end of the Balwyn shopping strip in 1941 near the current location of the Balwyn Library. The cinema with its curvaceous corner entrance on Whitehorse Road and Iramoo Street marked an impressive two-story cream bricked Deco Moderne building.  It had a checkered history marred with bad luck and closed in 1964 before being demolished. A petrol station now operates from the site.

Hoyts Time Cinema, 445 Whitehorse Road, Balwyn, 1941 by Lyle Fowler. Held by SLV H92.20/1325.

The Hoyts Time Theatre showed Oliver Twist in the week before Easter from Saturday 9 April until Thursday 14 April 1949. My father – the eldest of four kids – lived with his parents, Dorothy (Dot) and Jack, maternal grandfather, Jeremiah Donovan, Dot’s brother, Roy Donovan, and his wife Ellie and their four children, Colin, Leon, Helene and Denise. The two families lived at 50 Elphin Grove, Hawthorn. It seems like the outing to the theatre at night-time with the adults was a special treat particularly given the older cousin, Colin did not attend. Perhaps it was a promised birthday treat?

I heard from my friend Rebecca a few days after seeing Rear Window. Anna talked about the film for days and then organised her own night-time film screening to show the film to her aunty and father. She is now planning to reconstruct the apartment setting a Minecraft, an outcome that even the mind of Hitchcock could not have foreseen! I think for different reasons, this grown up film of Rear Window will live long in Anna’s memory just like Oliver Twist has lived in my father’s memory. Do you remember when you went to see your first grown up film at the cinema when you were a child?

[1] ‘Oliver Twist Powerful and Provocative Film’ in The Age, Mon 24 Jan 1949, p.2.

[2] ‘THE ARGUS SCREEN REVIEW Dickens Film’ in The Argus, Sat 22 Jan 1949, p.14.

[3] ‘Jews Hostile When Bevin Reaches USA‘ in The Argus, Fri 1 Apr 1949, p.4; ‘Berlin Bans ‘Oliver’ Film after Riot‘, in The Herald Sat 22 Feb 1949, p. 1.

[4] ‘CHILDREN CAN’T SEE ‘OLIVER‘ in The Herald, Sat 22 Jan 1949, p.1.

[5] ‘Dickens film not suitable for children‘ in The Argus, Mon 24 Jan 1949, p. 7.