Romantic Illusions In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

The prologue of Waltz into Darkness undermines any romantic illusions as the story itself begins, circa 1900, introducing us to a wealthy Cuban coffee planter named Luis Durand who anticipates the arrival of a mail order bride named Julia Russell (Jolie). Handsome and rich, he has never married ("Love is not for me. Love is for those people who believe in it"). His expectations for the bride are realistic: "She is not meant to be beautiful. She is meant to be kind, true and young enough to bear children." "You don't recognize me, do you?" Julia murmurs in a thrilling low register, as he finds her standing before him at the dock. He does not. This sultry vision is not the plain woman in the photograph he holds. She confesses she sent the wrong photo because she did not want a man who was attracted only to her beauty. He confesses, too: He owns his plantation and is not simply a worker there. He didn't want to attract a gold-digger.

"Then we have something in common," she says. "Neither one of us can be trusted." Actually, he can.

"Original Sin" is based on the novel Waltz into Darkness , by the famous noir writer Cornell Woolrich. Another of his books inspired Hitchcock's "Rear Window"--and indeed this one was earlier filmed as "Mississippi Mermaid" by Francois Truffaut, in 1969 and Catherine Deneuve played the roles). Like many good

Thomas Hardy hoped to capture the lifestyles of Wessex County, particularly the farming practices, technologies, and the relationships farmers and villagers had with the land in England during the 1800s. While Hardy’s Casterbridge is fictional, it is based on the town of Dorchester in Dorset. Hardy lived in this area and used many realistic details in his novels. The visit of “a royal personage” referred to in the novel matches the historic trip of Prince Albert to Weymouth in July