Poorly written garbage

Talia Shire, generally known as Adrian in “Rocky” and Michael’s sister in “The Godfather”, didn’t get many cracks at starring roles and so must have jumped at the chance to play the character in “Windows”. It’s one rife with dramatic possibilities, or should have been, and at the very least I think she knew what those possibilities were. She got raked over the coals for this movie but i’m not sure she’s exactly the worst offender here. In the film’s key moments, she seems to know how the character should feel. But she’s been given such minimal motivation or personality that I don’t think she was ever able to give this character any life past a few traits.


It has her playing a shy, stuttering woman named Emily who is attacked one night in her apartment. The knife-wielding maniac cuts off some of her clothes, puts the knife on the edge of her mouth, and makes her plead into a tape recorder. It’s a chilling scene but where does the movie go from here?


She definitely has a stalker, or several, on her hands and one of the movie’s biggest sins is that it tells us exactly who that is within the opening scenes. It all has to do with psychotic lesbianism yet the villain here is a bore. All she does is whine and deep-breathe while spying on Emily from across the way with her telescope, in what feels like a nod to “Rear Window” without ever being thrilling. The one thing that interested me about her is that she seems, at the very least, rich and well-to-do yet her behavior at all times is reduced to such weirdo, psychotic tics that we wonder how she hasn’t been committed yet.


But back to Emily, who is basically what we see is what we get. Shire plays her vulnerable, shaky, and whimpering yet the actress is never given much opportunity to explore her own emotions, to heal, or even express what’s going through her mind. Instead the film makes the bizarre choice of having the lead Detective (Joseph Cortese) on her case also begin dating her cause why not try to pick-up the traumatized assault victim? The closest thing this thing has to a thrill is Emily’s encounter with a cab driver and even that has major plot holes attached to it, while the murder of Emily’s new neighbor couldn’t be more irrelevant.


The film was the lone directorial effort of Gordon Willis, a DP on so many great movies to name just a few. And it looks fine, the grittiness of New York comes through, and the ominous lighting is doing a lot of work here..mostly because the pacing sucks and the thrills are terribly subdued. The idea here should have been a more psychological treatment of both Emily’s trauma and the obsessed villain’s infatuation but instead it reduces them both to easy mannerisms and deficiencies. In the end they both come off as stiff and lifeless as the unfortunate kitty in this movie.