What Could Have Been: Confessions of a Window Cleaner

If you had to guess what would be the top grossing British made film in Great Britain in 1974, thoughts would immediately go to the most recent James Bond adventure, The Man with the Golden Gun, or perhaps Roger Moore’s other successful feature of that year – Gold; then your mind might circulate to some of the popular comedy franchises of the time like Carry On (74's being Carry On Dick), or On the Buses (though those were released in 1971, 72, and 73), but instead, it’s the lesser known outside the UK, Confessions of a Window Cleaner... which also spawned three sequels released the next three years – but more on those later.

If you’re looking for one of the most wildly intense nights of chaos set on film, then Airport (1970), co-written and directed by George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) is in the running for that honour. Often deemed a disaster movie with plenty of drama, moments of action, tinges of comedy (see above), as well as some obvious thrills, it’s a mixed bag of sorts, as it’s got an impressively massive cast, clever use of split screen to keep the narrative moving along (it might remind some of the popular 2000s tv show 24), and throw a wild number of ideas at the screen to create one frantic evening effect, yet its languid pacing holds some of these elements back from being a more memorable disaster thriller. In fact, star Burt Lancaster even called it “a piece of junk”.

Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, back in 1976, Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader, before becoming household names (that would happen later the very same year with De Palma’s Carrie and Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver), attended a screening of an original print of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), and were immediately inspired to co-write a story (with the latter polishing off the screenplay) for a movie that would eventually be titled Obsession – not at all related to this year’s box office craze with the same title, or the review posted here last week called Obsession: A Taste for Fear (1987). Like much of De Palma’s work, this too finds its brainchild from Hitchcock’s oeuvre, as mentioned before, most notably Vertigo.

After a middling success with Broadway Bill (1934), Frank Capra wanted to return to the gargantuan success he had with his film released earlier that year, the rare Academy Award winner of the ‘Big Five’, It Happened One Night. Turning pen to paper with his then go to writer Robert Riskin, they worked on developing a tale based upon Clarence Budington’s short story “Opera Hat” – which was turned into serial form in The American Magazine, and it soon became the director’s biggest box office success yet, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). Certainly part of why Frank Capra’s work would become known as ‘Capracorn’, this feature thrives thanks to its Great Depression setting (which was obviously still a major problem at the time), sweetly sentimental charm, and its belief in a humanist outlook.

With an idea of fusing a semi-futuristic, sexy gialli murder mystery plot into the world of the ever growing MTV music video era that kicked off in 1981, producer Jacques Goyard hired music video director Piccio Raffanini to co-write and direct these loose ideas into what became Obsession: A Taste for Fear (1987). Basically looking like an hour and thirty-two minute music video infused with a hint of a mystery thriller plot, the cinematography and camera work actually frequently looks great, but Raffanini’s talent at what he does best cannot properly translate into a cinematic language.

Made for a very, very reasonable budget of only three million dollars, co-writer and director Scott Mann’s Fall (2022) became not only a minor box office success, grossing just over eighteen million dollars, but is also a film that is not for anyone who might be suffering from acrophobia – also known as a fear of heights. Following twenty-something Becky Connor (Grace Caroline Currey), she was an avid rock climber until the day her husband Dan (Mason Gooding) fell to his death while on one of their climbing trips with fellow enthusiast Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner).