Like Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic that makes for such an obvious comparison to The Woman in the Window, the latter Amy Adams-starring “slow burn” thriller is also based on some fictive source material. Unlike it, however, Tracy Letts’ script is adapted from a full-length novel of the same name by “A.J. Finn”—a moniker as made up as the lies Daniel Mallory told to further his literary career, but what does that matter when the “sentiment” is “authentic”? (see: JT LeRoy, James Frey). It certainly didn’t make a difference to director Joe Wright (no stranger to adaptations thanks to the likes of Pride & Prejudice and Atonement) or screenwriter Letts (who also plays the role of the shrink). Nor has it ostensibly worried anyone involved in the project to still freely employ Gary Oldman and Scott Rudin.
In this way, too, the film has a certain “1950s quality” à la Rear Window—in that no one is concerned about letting abusers continue to flourish off the set by letting them do so on it. What Rear Window didn’t think to do was slap L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) with a mental condition that could account for him being inside all the time. The “quaintness” of agoraphobia, however, is no longer something that difficult for the average person to imagine. For in 2020, the majority was forced to experience some form of anxiety-inducing fear about leaving the house. Maybe that’s why 2021 turned out to be the perfect moment for this movie’s release, originally scheduled for last year before post-pandemic movie theater closures tampered with a slew of planned dates (No Time to Die knows the plight). It’s now as though the collective can better identify with a character like Anna Fox (Adams). One summary for the novel describes how “Anna spends her days drinking too much alcohol, playing online chess, communicating with other recluses through the ‘Agora online forum,’ watching old movies, and meeting with her shrink and physical therapist. She also spends time spying on her neighbors.” Who among us can’t admit that this sounds like a day in the life pulled from “the quarantine age”? Or, for those who were already blazing a trail, just another day with or without a pandemic.
With Letts doing a more “by the numbers” approach to adaptation (which was already done by Finn to begin with), it has to be said that, for Rear Window, it was in Hitchcock’s best interest to pull the voyeuristic tale of Jeffries from a short story—for that would naturally allow him even more creative license to flesh out the details (particularly the visual ones he was so renowned for). Cornell Woolrich’s aptly titled “It Had to Be Murder” provides a similar premise as The Woman in the Window with regard to an overly curious neighbor (that curiosity stemming from having nothing but time on his hands) stumbling upon a little case of femicide.
Anna, who counts herself as a child counselor when she’s not entering the void, might spend even more time being a “busybody” if she could… if only all the mixing of alcohol with her meds didn’t make her check out so effortlessly. Some would dare say: “hallucinate.” And here the most major divide between Anna and Jeffries is established: she’s a “mad” woman and he’s simply a photographer who had some bad luck in breaking his leg, therefore needing to remain holed up in his Greenwich Village apartment until it heals. His word has more authority than Anna’s, who is easily written off by everyone who knows about her as a “crazy cat lady.” Someone to be pitied and avoided. Except for the one person who can’t: the tenant at her palatial W 121st Street home, David Winter (Wyatt Russell), a “singer-songwriter” who moonlights as a handyman. For the most part, Anna does her best to give him his space, but as her insecurity and self-doubt escalates throughout the film, her dependence upon him also increases—only to both of their detriments.
In the background of it all remains the usual cast of characters across from her building that she keeps track of just like Jeffries, though there are no memorable standouts like Miss Torso, Miss Lonelyhearts or The Songwriter (even if The Woman in the Window tries to wield its trumpet player to the best of its abilities). There are, however, the indelible Russells. The new family that just moved in across the street at 101—intended to be a foil for the Thorwalds in Rear Window. The fact that the wife’s name is Jane Russell only adds to the overt desire to pay “homage” (while mostly patently ripping off, but that’s the world of “originality” au présent) to the movies of Hitchcock’s era and Hollywood’s Golden Age—as these are the DVDs (yes, DVDs) Anna likes to watch in her free time. Wanting to put none too fine a point on how much Rear Window gave birth to this story, the movie offers a series of freeze frames of Jeffries on the TV in Anna’s house being strangled by Thorwald before panning elsewhere in the abode. This is within the first minute of The Woman in the Window commencing. Establishing the tone of Anna’s movie-filled life—and how it might fuel a predilection for “fantasy”—this also plays up the gender politics of this script-flipping via a woman in the lead role of voyeur. And how her credibility is more of an “issue” than it is for Jeffries, who goes totally unquestioned by his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), or nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), when he makes his claims of witnessing a murder.
Sure, maybe he’s not a known agoraphobic being dosed with a steady stream of medications, but still, the fact that no one was even half as skeptical of his claims versus Anna’s is one of the major unwitting political facets of The Woman in the Window. That, and, well, an agoraphobic becoming a more empathetic character than any of us could have previously imagined thanks to the events of the past year.
Another disadvantage Anna is working with that Jeffries never had to stems from a lack of any real support system. Even one person who might believe her unequivocally. Which is where the deft ability classic and film noir movies once used in toying with the fine line between madness and sanity (think: Gaslight) comes in. Joe Wright’s use of movie scenes, in fact, are among the most brilliant aspects of The Woman in the Window, framing the shot just so to make it look as ominous in Anna’s tableau as it does in Lauren Bacall’s (Dark Passage being among the films showcased on Anna’s screen as she teeters in and out of consciousness).
Beyond merely Hitchcock and Old Hollywood, there are other influences on the book (and so, the movie) as well. One includes a moment during which Anna realizes someone has taken her picture while she was sleeping—an instant pulled straight out of David Lynch’s Lost Highway playbook. Then there is the movie everyone seems to forget about: Copycat. That still too under the radar 1995 movie starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter. But it wasn’t under the radar enough for readers to call out the similarities when Finn’s novel first came out. In this movie, Weaver as Dr. Helen Hudson also has her reasons for being an agoraphobic, but the city setting is San Francisco (another Hitchcockian star thanks to Vertigo). As for the “New York element” at play in The Woman in the Window, the extent of it goes about as far as: no one is really that nonplussed by another dead body. Most of New York is already half-dead (spiritually) anyway. Oh yes, and then there is the fact that we’re supposed to believe Anna has enough means to afford living in such a coveted brownstone in “gentrified Harlem” (collecting additional rent from a tenant or not) despite doing nothing all day and likely having to pay exorbitant psych bills. That’s a very “New York thing,” too—in terms of New York’s frequently unrealistic onscreen portrayal.
And, in the end, so is deciding to leave a space that has become nothing but a trauma epicenter during one’s too lengthy tenure there. Hopefully, unlike Jeffries, Anna will have the good sense to flee the city entirely. It’s no place for an agoraphobic, after all. Then again, she just might be “cured” of that condition now.
