The first time that I saw The Bedroom Window, I had a hard time believing Steve Guttenberg in the role of Terry Lambert. Guttenberg has such boyish charm and such a wide grin, too wide and too boyish, I thought, for noir. But the second time that I saw the film, I realized that he was actually perfect for the part: the naïve guy who falls for the seductive charms of an older married woman and would do anything to protect her; someone who is comfortable in the role of the gallant knight in shining armor; someone who is on his own when the married woman, Sylvia Wentworth, turns into a femme fatale the minute Terry needs her and asks for her help.
The film is a fairly close adaptation of the novel The Witnesses, by Anne Holden. The differences between the film and the novel seem major when they are listed on paper (or on screen, as it were), but the screenwriter did a good job updating the film and transferring the setting to Baltimore, Maryland. I have already written about Holden’s novel, and you can click here to see my article about it, where I discuss some of the differences.
The Bedroom Window opens with a close-up of the statue of George Washington atop the Washington Monument in the Mount Vernon–Belvedere neighborhood in Baltimore, where the film takes place. I noticed the statue’s sightless eyes, which is very unsettling and perhaps an obvious metaphor. The camera pans down to a car arriving on one of the neighborhood streets at night. The driver backs into a space at the end of a one-way street, something that appears to be a well-rehearsed habit. The driver, a man, gets out of the car and walks down the street to an apartment building. Once inside the building and in his own apartment, he gathers clothes and throws them into a closet. When he glances out his bedroom window, he sees a woman, Sylvia Wentworth, arriving at the front door of the building. At that precise moment, she is in the same spot in which a woman, Denise Connelly will be attacked much later that night. But for now, she is simply a married woman arriving to start a new affair with Terry Lambert.
Sylvia gets up in the middle of the night and witnesses the attack on the woman from Terry’s window. She also gets a clear view of the assailant. By the time that Terry arrives at the window, the assailant is gone, and both of them see the woman being helped by other neighbors. Terry says something about the woman being all right after all. She isn’t, though: She is bloody and battered and needs help walking away after the attack. Terry walks Sylvia out to her car because she wonders out loud at one point what would have happened if she had been the one outside at the wrong time. After she gets into her car, Terry asks her, “Any regrets?” “Not one,” she replies. “In spite of what happened. Maybe because of it. It’s the most exciting night I can remember. You?” Terry states, “Regrets? Are you kidding?”
Both Terry and Sylvia seem rather cavalier about the attack outside Terry’s window. And so is Collin Wentworth, Terry’s boss and Sylvia’s husband. Terry Lambert works at Wentworth Development Corporation (WDC), run by Collin. The morning after the attack, Collin Wentworth calls Terry into his office, and Collin is holding a gun that supposedly belonged to Bugsy Siegel. Collin makes a point of mentioning that he recently purchased the gun, it is forty years old, and it has never been registered. Is Terry to interpret Collin’s statements as threatening? They make him nervous. Later in the narrative, Collin finds out about Terry’s involvement in the police investigation of Denise Connelly’s assault because detectives show up at the WDC offices to question him. Collin calls Terry Lambert’s experience “interesting.”
Terry notices a newspaper article on Collin’s desk about a coed who was killed a few blocks from Terry’s apartment the same night of the attack that Sylvia witnessed. He squirrels away the newspaper article without telling Collin why he wants to read it. When Sylvia learns of this second and fatal attack, she tells Terry that she would like to do the right thing and report what she has seen, but then she would have to admit that she was in Terry Lambert’s apartment. Terry decides to act as a witness instead, to help Sylvia hide her role in the affair, and calls the police. Terry’s decision sets in motion a sequence of events that quickly snowball. Police detectives contact him to find out what he knows, and he eventually is cajoled into being a witness for the trial of someone named Chris Henderson.
(This article about The Bedroom Window contains spoilers.)
Before Terry becomes a witness in the Henderson assault trial, he goes to the police station for what he thinks is another interview by detectives. While waiting, he sits next to the victim of the attack, Denise Connelly, one of his neighbors. He doesn’t recognize her, even a little bit. When the detectives come out to talk to him, they tell him that they want him to try to identify the assailant in a lineup. He is alarmed about this development in the investigation because he never saw the attack or the assailant and barely got a good look at the victim, which she realizes when she meets him in the waiting room at the police station.
Terry Lambert cannot identify Chris Henderson in the lineup, but he is alarmed enough about the increasing police interest in him and the turn of events to start his own investigation by tailing the man he thinks is the attacker after he sees him leaving the police station. Terry eventually becomes a suspect after his spectacular failure as a witness at Chris Henderson’s trial for the assault on Denise Connelly. The detectives become even more suspicious of him after they interview his neighbors about his comings and goings on the night of the attack. Terry still won’t admit to the affair with Sylvia Wentworth and thus lies about why he left his apartment that night. He asks Sylvia for help, only to discover that she has told her husband about the affair and has no reason now to help Terry.
With no one to help him, Terry turns to Denise Connelly, the victim of Chris Henderson’s assault and attempted murder. He is a little mystified about her reasons for trusting him, and he asks her about this directly. She tells Terry that she trusted him when they first met at the police station waiting to see the lineup.
• Terry: “Tell me something. Even when you knew I was lying, you didn’t suspect me like the police. Why?”
• Denise: “I knew something the police didn’t. Remember the first time we met? The lineup?”
• Terry: “How could I forget?”
• Denise: “I knew something was wrong even then. It was obvious you’d never seen me before from your bedroom window or anyplace else. And you were completely indifferent to what you did see. Not flattering, perhaps, but upon reflection, trustworthy . . .”
Denise trusts Terry enough to join him in an investigation of their own. I have to admit that this part of the story seems a little far-fetched, but Terry’s and Denise’s joint investigation increases the tension and makes for several nail-biting sequences that were never part of the novel. I found it hard to sit still, even on second viewing when I knew what was going to happen! Their joint investigation works on the suspense level.
Steven Guttenberg is a surprise in the role of Terry Lambert. I wasn’t convinced at first, as I said, but a second viewing changed my mind on that point. Part of the reason that it works, however, is because of Isabelle Huppert’s performance as Sylvia Wentworth. She can go from beguiling to treacherous when it suits the needs of the role, and she makes it easy to see why Terry Lambert would fall for her in the first place. Huppert is a force to be reckoned with whenever she is on-screen, and The Bedroom Window is a perfect showcase for her abilities to take command and then let go without any trace of guilt or remorse: a femme fatale par excellence.
When Terry Lambert asked Sylvia if she had any regrets about their affair, he really should have paid attention when she told him, “Not one.”
January 16, 1987, release date • Directed by Curtis Hanson • Screenplay by Curtis Hanson • Based on the novel The Witnesses by Anne Holden • Music by Michael Shrieve, Patrick Gleeson • Edited by Scott Conrad • Cinematography by Gilbert Taylor
Steve Guttenberg as Terry Lambert • Elizabeth McGovern as Denise Connelly • Isabelle Huppert as Sylvia Wentworth • Paul Shenar as Collin Wentworth • Carl Lumbly as Detective Quirke • Frederick Coffin as Detective Jessup • Brad Greenquist as Chris Henderson • Wallace Shawn as Henderson’s defense attorney • Robert Schenkkan as State Attorney Peters • Francis V. Guinan Jr. as Peter, the bartender at Edgar’s • J. Michael Hunter as the pool player at Edgar’s • Sara Carlson as the dancer • Mark Margolis as the man in the phone booth • Jodi Long as the cocktail waitress • Richard K. Olsen as the late-night shopper • Leon Rippy as the bartender • Kate McGregor-Stewart as Terry’s neighbor • Maury Chaykin as the pool player
Distributed by StudioCanal, Lionsgate Films • Produced by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
