Lecture by Pamela Robertson Wojcik, University of Notre Dame

This free talk was part of The Second Annual Dr. Saul and Dorothy Kit Film Noir Festival
Into the Night: Cornell Woolrich and Film Noir

This talk considers the process of adaptation in The Window, Rear Window, and The Bride Wore Black. Rather than worry about whether the films get the Woolrich source material "right," this talk envisions the films as unique performances or variations of their source texts. The films each amplify certain themes and components of the plots while abandoning others, and, in some cases, supplement the original material. In this sense, adaptation can be seen as a kind of authorship that simultaneously reflects the concerns of the film's author and provides a new lens on the original Woolrich story.

Pamela Robertson Wojcik is a Professor in Film, TV and Theatre, and Concurrent Faculty in American Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. She is author of Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna (1996), The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (2010), and Fantasies of Neglect: Imaging the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction (2016). She is currently writing a book about the film Gidget.