Director Joe Wright was so distraught about the experience that he had while making The Woman in the Window, he pivoted to his latest film, Cyrano, almost as an exercise to reconnect with his soul. Based on the bestselling novel by A.J. Finn—a pseudonymous author who has his own turbulent history—The Woman in the Window was heavily re-edited after it tested poorly with audiences, only to be shunted to streaming by the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios. In a new interview with Vulture, Wright spoke about his original vision.
Describing it as “a long, protracted, frustrating experience,” Wright said that the version that eventually saw the light of day wasn’t the “more brutal” film that he had originally made. The filmmaker revealed that his cut had an “abrasive and hard-core” score by Academy Award-winner Trent Reznor, and mimicked the style of Irréversible director Gaspar Noé’s films. In his own words:
"It got watered down. It got watered down a lot. It was a lot more brutal in my original conception. Both aesthetically, with really fucking hard cuts and really violent music — Trent Reznor did an incredible score for it that was abrasive and hard-core — and in its depiction of Anna, Amy Adams’s character, who was far messier and kind of despicable in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, audiences like women to be nice in their movies. They don’t want to see them get messy and ugly and dark and drunk and taking pills. It’s fine for men to be like that, but not for women. So the whole thing was watered down to be something that it wasn’t. The cuts were really hard. I always think about that Gaspar Noe film, I Stand Alone, where there’s like a gunshot on every single cut, so you were dreading him cutting at all, and it left you a complete nervous wreck. There was something of that in Woman in the Window’s cinematic style. It was brutal. It was brutalist. And would you believe it? They didn’t like it! [Laughs] I always think that people are going to get what I do and that of course it’s worth spending X amount of millions of dollars on a sort of formal experiment in fucking anxiety. And when people go, ‘Hmmm, that’s not really what we …,’ I get surprised. I think that sort of thing is fine if you’re working with a Gaspar Noe budget. If you’re working with a Hollywood budget, it’s probably not such a clever idea."
The Woman in the Window ultimately featured a score by Danny Elfman, who’d previously performed similar duties when he replaced Junkie XL on the theatrical version of Justice League. His score for The Woman in the Window was more Hitchcockian, as were the film’s visuals. Although cinema was a key theme in the novel as well—the agoraphobic protagonist spends her evenings watching classic films—Wright’s attempts to evoke the techniques of master directors, albeit “watered down,” were easy to spot. Although the Noé influence appears to have been diluted, the version that was released paid homage to not just Alfred Hitchcock, but also Brian DePalma and Dario Argento.
It was the film’s abrupt, action-heavy third act that seemed tacked on, deviating not just in visual style, but also turning Amy Adams’ protagonist into a more sympathetic figure.
Wright admitted that it is entirely possible that his version was terrible, too. So, in that regard, gunning for a director's cut of the movie might just be delusional. He added:
“I think it would cost a lot of money to do, because you’d have to reedit the whole thing, regrade it, remix it. But it would be fun. I’d love to do it. There’s a great scene where she had sex with the bloke downstairs and stuff like that. It was very different. I’m not going to delude myself. It could just be that it was a film that didn’t work and that’s okay, too. We have a right as artists to fail. We have to keep pushing ourselves. You’ve got to come in with a fairly decent batting average, but if you don’t make the occasional film that doesn’t work, then you’re not fucking trying hard enough.”
Released to reviews that ranged from lukewarm to poor, The Woman in the Window also starred Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Wyatt Russell, Bryan Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Julianne Moore. Wright has successfully bounced back—something that he’s done many times before—with his musical drama Cyrano, which has earned significantly better reviews. The film’s currently playing in theaters. You can watch The Woman in the Window on Netflix.