For roughly half of the time I was in the third grade, we lived in Tucumcari, New Mexico.  I do not want to throw shade on the town, as I have not been there in several decades, but there was nothing to do there even at that young age but to go looking for trouble through the great many opportunities such a sprawling and sparsely populated landscape can offer a mischievous young boy.  I remember playing with the other kids in long-abandoned cattle trailers, a significant injury, or at least a case of tetanus, just waiting to happen.

In this way, I could identify with Bobby Driscoll and his world when we first see him in 1949’s The Window.  All these boys who seem to be around the age I was during my time in the desert all play in a condemned building.  Also, the other boys are all tired of Driscoll’s obvious lies, bragging and tall tales, and I can identify with that, too, as I was also a pathologically lying little shit when I was a kid.

A big difference between my environment and his is he lives in a tenement slum in New York City.  It’s the kind where they have laundry hanging on lines strung between buildings.  Whenever I see that in a movie of TV show, I wonder if those clotheslines were installed there by the landlords, or if the tenants put them up themselves.  If it is the latter, how did they accomplish that, and how did they convince their neighbor immediately across the street or alley from them to do this?  Also, what kept people from stealing other people’s laundry?

There is something else common to these places when shown in movies and that is it being so hot that people sleep on the fire escape.  Once again, I wonder how close this is to reality for most people who lived in such conditions, as I never had to that myself. 

It is on such a night that Driscoll is the only person trying to sleep on the landing just outside his apartment window.  Compounding the many faults of the lad, he’s also a Peeping Tom.  Actually, given his character is named Tommy, I guess he’s really a Peeping Tommy, which is what I think the should call all young voyeurs. 

Anywho, he happens to be peering into the window of the upstairs neighbors (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman) when he happens to see the couple struggling with a man before she apparently fatally stabs him in the back with a pair of scissors.  Given his propensity of fabrications, this is the setup for a noir variation on “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, which I would like to call “The Peeping Tommy Who Cried Murderous Neighbors”.

Barbara Hale plays Driscoll’s mom, and she is convinced that, even if he isn’t deliberately lying again like the lying liar he is, he might have dreamed what he thinks he saw.  Even Driscoll starts to wonder that, except he had to sneak back up the fire escape to retrieve the pillow he accidentally left behind.  There is a solid moment of suspense where Stewart and Roman had been carrying the body across a couple of rooftops in the time the pillow is retrieved.

They didn’t seem to notice the pillow on as the carried that corpse up to the roof but they were quite occupied at the time.  But they will soon discover Driscoll knows their secret, in a scene of gut-wrenching tension when Hale drags her son upstairs to apologize to Brown for the rumors he’s been spreading about her and her husband.  An unnerving shot from Driscoll’s perspective shows Brown’s smile barely concealing her hostility.

That kid’s-view perspective is also employed when he tries to go to the police.  When he goes to the front counter, all we see from the desk sergeant’s side is the top of Driscoll’s head.  In the matching shot from the opposite side, all Driscoll can see is the top of the officer’s head.  That’s a nice touch, and it is elements like this which make us better empathize with the youth.

The detectives don’t believe him, but one still goes to the apartment of Stewart and Brown under the ruse of being a contractor hired by the landlord to inspect the premises for faults and then provide an estimate for repairs.  He almost gets close enough to see a spot on a rug is where they had washed the blood out, only there conveniently are water stains on the ceiling immediately above, making it appear the damage to the rug was from a leaking roof.

Another convenient development has Roman summoned by a sick relative, and she will probably be there overnight.  Since her husband and Driscoll’s dad (Arthur Kennedy) works nights, the boy will have to face the diabolical couple alone.

Kennedy is especially sick of his son’s fabrications, the most recent of which almost cost them their apartment.  Before he leaves for work that night, he says Driscoll has finally forced him to do something he never wanted to do.  He grabs a hammer and three nails.  I knew corporal punishment was the standard back then, but I thought crucifixion might be a step too far.  I need not have worried, as was instead nailing Driscoll’s bedroom window shut.  He was also lock him in, though he leaves the key in the lock.

This setup leads to a great moment of suspense when Driscoll forces the key out of the lock, unaware Stewart is watch nonchalantly from the other side.  The boy uses a coat hanger under the door to fish for the fallen key, and an amused Stewart even helps out by sliding the key to be without reach.

I won’t reveal any more of the plot, but the final third is a nail-biter, with me at a loss multiple times for a guess as to how Driscoll would live until the end.  One aspect of the production which makes it stand out is the threat the lad faces is never played for laughs or softened in any other way.  These are two people who really want to silence him permanently.  One notably ugly moment has Stewart knocking him out with a single punch, something we hear but do not see, as Brown is position in the foreground as to block the shot.

Another element which helps to draw the viewer into this world is the mix of real-life locations and sets that are realistic enough to not call attention to themselves. 

I highly recommend The Window, a picture that treats the idea of a kid in mortal danger with more tact and sophistication than any other I recall seeing from that era.  If it did anything less, then it wouldn’t feel like there was so much at stake, and we wouldn’t be so engrossed by Driscoll’s attempt to flee these murders.  The tension is palpable in moments such as when he keeps barely edging out of the way of the beam of a flashlight Brown is shining through his bedroom window. 

In real life, Driscoll couldn’t get away from a different menace.  Loaned out to RKO after Song of the South, his owners at the Disney Corporation recalled him for Treasure Island.  Even later, he would be the voice of the titular character in their Peter Pan, as the boy would never grow up.  For a brief moment, The Window has him as a boy who appeared in be in serious danger of not growing any older at all.

Dir: Ted Tetzlaff

Starring Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy

Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray