The Bedroom Window (1987)

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

The Witnesses (Book) (1971)

The Witnesses is a quick, engrossing read. It probably would have been a page-turner for me if I hadn’t seen the film based on it first: The Bedroom Window (1987). At 200 pages and a small trim size, it could almost be called a novella. I’ve heard that the difference between a novel and a novella is that the latter can be read in one or two sittings, and no more. It took me more than two sittings to read The Witnesses, but certainly not for lack of interest.

The novel starts with Sylvia Manson, a married woman having an affair with a younger man named Terence Lambert. She awakens in his apartment during the night and decides to leave without waking him. She’s in no rush; she goes to his bedroom window and looks out at the neighborhood. She spots a woman walking down the street, and then a man almost running after her. He attacks her from behind, and Sylvia calls out to Terence because she cannot get his bedroom window open. The attacker is chased off when the woman screams and neighbors come out to the street to assist her. Before Terence can get to the window, Sylvia gets a good look at the attacker; Terence sees nothing.

Later, when Sylvia and Terence learn about other attacks on women in the neighborhood, Sylvia becomes concerned. She knows that she got a good look at the attacker, and she believes that no one else did because he always rushes up from behind. She would like to tell the police what she saw, but that would mean having to explain what she was doing in Terence Lambert’s apartment in the middle of the night, and such a threat to her marriage is not a risk that she is willing to take. Without telling Sylvia first, Terence decides to go to the police himself with the information about the attacker that Sylvia told him.

(This article about the novel The Witnesses contains spoilers about the novel and the film based on it: The Bedroom Window [1987].)

Sylvia’s and Terence’s decisions lead them into complications that neither one of them foresee. They are living in their own private world, having closed themselves off because Sylvia is not interested in revealing their affair or ending her relationship with Terence. They started with one big lie about the affair, and then they start telling more lies to keep it hidden. At first, their intentions about the attacker are noble: They don’t want to see more young women attacked and possibly killed. But they cannot continue crafting their own small world on such shaky foundations, and the ensuing police investigation is really a parallel plot line that eventually converges on their lives and forces everything to crumble around them.

The author switches points of view: Sometimes readers see the unfolding events from Terence’s perspective and sometimes from Sylvia’s. Inspector Quirke and Sergeant Jessup, the police responsible for the investigation of what becomes a serial murder case, are most often described from Terence Lambert’s point of view, but every once in a great while, the police detectives are given their own brief perspective on the crime and the evidence. Toward the end of the novel, Inspector Quirke and Sergeant Jessup are well aware of Sylvia and that she and Terence are at least acquainted. They are not quite sure of the connection between the two just yet. The following is an excerpt from their conversation about the case.

[Sergeant Jessup speaking here first.] “Lambert gave a detailed description of the alleged attacker, and it was later proved in court that he couldn’t have seen him at all clearly at the time.”

“Right. But the anonymous note gave basically the same description.”

“No evidence who wrote that, sir. Could have been Lambert himself.”

“The handwriting chaps think it’s unlikely Lambert wrote the address on the envelope.”

“He could have got someone to do it for him,” said the sergeant.

“Who could he have asked?”

“The girl friend.”

“The Manson woman, you mean?”

“It could have been, sir. She’s mixed up in it somehow, I swear.”

The inspector looked doubtful. “Not just the friend of a key witness?” he asked.

“I suppose it’s possible, sir, but somehow I don’t think so. There is something that doesn’t add up there.” (page 193)

By this point, Terence Lambert has become a credible suspect, and in noir fashion, it’s all his own fault. It started with going to the police to give a description that Sylvia saw, not him. But Terence takes it a step further by following the original suspect, Chris Henderson, thereby putting himself in locations where attacks and murders have occurred, sometimes with witnesses who can describe him and pinpoint his whereabouts. This turn in events puts a strain on Terence’s and Sylvia’s relationship because she refuses to give him an alibi to help prove his innocence. She will not do anything that threatens her marriage, even though she started harming her marriage when she agreed to start seeing Terence.

In the last paragraphs of the novel, Terence tries desperately to get help from Sylvia, to get her to provide him with an alibi to help clear all suspicion that he could be the murderer, but she refuses. She is willing to accuse him of physical assault because he grabs her hard enough to hurt her, but in so doing, she does the very thing she feared the most: She exposes her affair with Terence and her involvement as a witness for the attack on the woman in Terence’s neighborhood.

Her [Sylvia’s] eyes blazed at him. “You’re hurting me—let me go.”

                “Sylvia, you must help me. Can’t you see? You must speak up.”

                “Never,” she said. “How can you be so selfish?”

                “Selfish? It’s you who’s selfish—a monster of selfishness.”

                “There’s a train coming!” she cried, beginning to struggle. “Let me go.”

                He felt her straining to get away from him, he tightened his grip, moved his hands closer together, sliding them up along her shoulders toward her neck, and he saw fear come into her eyes and felt a surge of power. His breath was coming in great hissing gulps.

“Help,” she screamed. “Help!” and he squeezed her throat so as not to hear her voice. Dimly he heard feet running, a whistle, hands wrenching him roughly back, so that he fell. Through a thickening mist he heard her say, “This man, he attacked me, he jumped at me from behind.” (pages 199–200)

Sylvia doesn’t realize that the police by now will have questions for her. She doesn’t realize that they are already aware of her connection to Terence and that she cannot claim he is a stranger to her.

The film adaptation The Bedroom Window doesn’t end on such a cynical—albeit realistic—note. The film’s ending is a Hollywood version of making everything right about a bleak story. I still enjoyed it, however, maybe as much as the novel. Even though the film follows the novel pretty closely, there are some glaring differences, which really make it easy to like both independently and for different reasons. Here is a list of just a few of the differences between the film and the novel:

◊ The film takes place in Baltimore, Maryland. The novel takes place in London, England, but this fact isn’t confirmed until page 129. I knew the author hailed from New Zealand, and I was pretty sure that the story took place in former British colony, if not England itself. But I found it a bit annoying that the setting wasn’t made clear earlier in the novel.

◊ Terence wants to help Sylvia in the film; he comes up with the idea of going to the police. Neither one of them ever send any anonymous tips or letters to the police. In the novel, it is Sylvia’s idea that Terence should contact the police about what she has witnessed, although he finally decides on his own to go to the police after protesting to her about the idea. Sylvia sends what the police call a “crank letter” using letters that she cut out of newspapers and sends the message via the post.

◊ In the film, Sylvia is worried that the assailant will strike again, but she soon forgets about this worry and has no intention of helping Terence in anyway. She doesn’t come across as someone who spends more than a little bit of time worrying about anything unless it could disrupt her already established life. Sylvia suffers some pangs of guilt off and on throughout the novel—until the prospect of losing her family becomes very real to her near the end.

◊ Terence Lambert works at Wentworth Development Corporation (WDC) in the film. His boss is Collin Wentworth, Sylvia’s husband. This adds some real tension to the story, but not nearly as much as the tension that is developed in the novel. In the novel, Terence is an accountant, like Sylvia’s husband Edgar Manson, but he doesn’t work for Manson. Their paths never cross.

◊ Terence has never seen the suspect, Chris Henderson, before he goes to the police station for the police lineup in the film. Henderson works at the docks in Baltimore Harbor. In the novel, Terence has seen the suspect (also named Chris Henderson) before. Henderson works at the garage where Terence took his car to be fixed before he sold it.

◊ Terence actually meets the female victim of the attack that Sylvia witnessed from his bedroom window in the film. They develop a relationship, and she helps Terence clear his name, which is definitely not part of the novel. In the novel, neither Terence nor Sylvia ever meets Chris Henderson or any of his victims. The screenplay for the film adaptation is really very clever at updating the story in the novel and moving it from London to Baltimore. 

When I started reading the novel, I was curious about the title, specifically the use of the plural (The Witnesses). Sylvia is the obvious witness, and Terence tries to take on that role, but he is unsuccessful. He soon learns that it is difficult to be a credible witness, especially when dealing with police detectives who have a lot of practice talking to people who claim to have information about crimes. By the end of the novel, however, the choice of the plural is much more obvious.

◊ Others in the neighborhood heard a female voice, not a male voice, as Terence claims, coming from his bedroom window on the night of the attack in his street.

◊ There are many more witnesses than Terry Lambert and Sylvia Manson ever imagined to their comings and goings, when they are apart and when they are together.

◊ Julie Manson, Sylvia’s daughter, may have tailed her mother after her friend Barbara talked about seeing Sylvia out with another man. She might be a witness to her mother’s infidelity.

◊ The police detectives have tailed Sylvia and are themselves witnesses: They know that she and Terry Lambert are at least acquainted.

◊ Witnesses unknown to Terence and Sylvia have come forward to the police to say that they have seen someone who looks like Terry Lambert in the same locations where several of the attacks and murders have taken place.

The novel ends with Sylvia accusing Terence of assaulting her, but readers don’t really know what happens past that point, not from the author anyway. Given the tone of the writing and the way Sylvia and Terence have convinced themselves they are living in their own private world, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine that their world is about to come crumbling down. I like the way the story just stops because it left it up to me to imagine what was coming for the two main characters.

The Witnesses, by Anne Holden  •  New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971

List of main characters: Sylvia Manson  •  Terence Lambert  •  Edgar Manson, Sylvia’s husband  •  Julia and Marion Manson, their daughters  •  Inspector Quirke, police detective  •  Sergeant Jessup, police detective  •  Chris Henderson, principal murder suspect

The image of the front cover is from the first edition, as noted above. The page references in this article refer to this first edition.