The Window 1949.

Fast little B noir that was based on a fast Cornell Woolrich short story. Running only 73 minutes this one has a lot going for it including on location New York City East Side story tenement life, a marvelous performance by little boy Bobby Driscoll who won a juvenile Oscar for this movie, and good supporting support from Arthur Kennedy, Barbara Hale, Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman. The story takes place in a hot and steamy city where Bobby lives with his parents (Kennedy and Hale) in a cramped and dingy ugly place and for fun the kid likes to make up wild stories that keep getting him in trouble. He’s the little boy who cried wolf too many times and when danger in real life comes knocking of course no one believes him and the chase is on. Danger lives here and actually lived in Driscoll’s sad short life when in 1968 his 31 year old drug overdosed marked body was found in an abandoned lower east side tenement forgotten and unknown, and thrown away in Potter’s Field. He had a good career as a Walt Disney kid star, but then nothing but dark skies in his life. He’s very good in this one, even with that squeaky cartoon like voice. I could have used a not so tidy and neat happy ending, but the getting there is good and nervous. Directed with care and assurance by Ted Tetzlaff who was known more as a cinematographer who began shooting movies in 1926 and did many wonderful films including his lush work for Hitchcock’s “Notorious.”