One of the chief pleasures of viewing “Rear Window,” and there are many, is watching the 112-minute fashion show put on by costumer Edith Head and star Grace Kelly, who plays ’50s fashionista Lisa Fremont.
Is there a better movie about the allures of fashion and the importance of jewelry that’s not really about fashion and jewelry?
From Lisa’s dreamy entrance in a fresh-from-Paris dress with a tight black top and full, white tulle skirt, to the quietly triumphant final shot of her reading “Harper’s Bazaar” while wearing a man-tailored shirt and blue jeans, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic is a fashion show of six looks, accessorized repeatedly with pearl necklaces.
And what helps James Stewarts’ L.B. Jeffries and Kelly’s Lisa Fremont solve the mystery of the missing wife across the courtyard, which is the mystery at the heart of a film that also explores love, marriage, loneliness and community?
Mrs. Thorwald’s diamond solitaire, colored-gemstone ring and gold wedding band.
Lisa: It doesn’t make sense to me…Women aren’t that unpredictable…A woman has a favorite handbag and it always hangs on her bedpost where she can get at it easily. And then all of a sudden, she goes away on a trip and leaves it behind. Why?
Jeff: Because she didn’t know she was going on a trip. And where she’s going she wouldn’t need the handbag.
Lisa: Yes, but only her husband would know that. And that jewelry. Women don’t keep their jewelry in a purse, getting all twisted and scratched and tangled up.
Jeff: Well, do they hide it in their husbands’ clothes?
Lisa: They do not. And they don’t leave it behind either. Why, a woman going anywhere but the hospital would always take makeup, perfume and jewelry…That’s basic equipment. And you don’t leave it behind in your husband’s drawer in your favorite handbag.
You tell him, Lisa!
I first saw “Rear Window” on the big screen in the mid-1980s, and I still remember sighing at the sight of the chunky charm bracelet that Lisa wears in this scene. (I would go on to purchase a cheap knockoff, and boy was it impractical. So clunky and noisy!)
Lisa’s bracelet was apparently the creation of Joan Joseff, whose contributions to “Rear Window” are uncredited but who enjoyed a lengthy career making costume jewelry for Hollywood films starring glamourpusses like Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.
When Joseff died at the age of 97 in 2010, she left behind a collection of more than 3 million pieces of costume jewelry made just for the movies. (Joseff Jewelry wisely rented their earrings, necklaces and brooches to the studios. And once filming wrapped? They took them back.)
It makes me wonder if that iconic “Rear Window” bracelet, dripping with pearls, padlocks and lockets, is in a vault somewhere in Hollywood, waiting to make its entrance on an auction block.
One can dream.
Iva Jewel 