The Wolf Whistles

The timing of all the wolf whistles coincides perfectly with Bigelow noticing attractive women in the hotel. Now how could that be if they were real wolf whistles actually being used by OTHER guys in the hotel? Bigelow was obviously not using one.

I thought they were just funny...

SPOILERS

Probably the intention was to anticipate him on a wild night out, and not his murder.

By the way, aren't Paula and Sue really really beautiful?


Protective, Detective, Electric Eye.

The Wolf Whistles are just terrible. TERRIBLE. But I don't know what is worse, the whistles or the music. It is a shame, since the movie is otherwise fantastic.


- This comment is most likely authentic and fairly close to what I intended to say -

I was a bit annoyed with those whistles myself but I did notice something about them: you only hear them in common areas of the hotel, like the front desk and the hallway. You don't hear it when he's in his room, even though attractive women go by his door and one even appears in the doorway. I think they're supposed to represent the society or atmosphere he was in at the time, and his room is supposed to represent act I of the Greek tragedy that will end his own life.

funny thing is i didnt even realise those where meant to be wolf whistles when i first saw this a few days ago. If that indeed is what those sounds where then i can't help but laugh. They sound just really stupid but maybe this was standard 'effect' for the time. Didnt take any gloss off the movie though, found it very entertaining.

I don't mind the wolf whistles in the sense that it would contemporary with the film. They just get on my pip though. It’s almost like they couldn’t just rely on the fact that people could actually SEE him looking at the women.

It would like have the ‘Cuckoo’ noise played in the “The Shining” every time Jack Torrance did something a little odd.

It’s a total odds with the noir nature of the rest of the film. Maybe that’s the point, trying to inject a little ‘lightness’ to the general blackness of the plot. I mean, it’s about a man whose dying trying to track his own murderer. How dark could it get for 1950!

I think these stupid whistles were dubbed on at some later point when the film fell into public domain. If you notice, they are much clearer than the rest of the sound in the movie.

In fact, there is a lot of sound that has been overdubbed in this movie. Listen to the phones every time they ring in the film. Each phone has two separte and distinct rings if you listen carefully enough.

But the most obvious instance of overdubbed sound was at the jazz club. Right after the Fisherman performs his number, you can hear two songs being played at the same time. One is obviously the song that the female character is referring to when she comments on "that crazy saxaphone" or whatever she says, but there is another song played on top of that which is a vocal.

I always assumed that this overdubbed sound was endemic to the copy I picked up at the 99 Cents Only Store, but I guess not. I always assumed that this one done so that the manufacturer could legitimately maintain that the sound was enhanced when it really wasn't. In any case, it's frickin' irritating.

Ha, ha! I was three years old at the time this film came out so I don't remember much about 1950. What I do remember is that wolf whistles were around for many years afterwards. I did it only once at about 6 years of age, and my mother washed my mouth with soap. I guess the practice died out - even with the "Construction Workers On Lunch Break" set...because it has been a long time since I heard one being delivered. In the movie, it was just a reminder of a time long past when men were less sensitive to women's feelings. I find it funny that so many are SO offended by something that is nothing more than a cliche' of it's day...and a corny one at that. After all, isn't such behavior most demeaning to the one who practices it? Or as Alice Faye says to her suiter in The Gang's All Here, "Do you really get results with that line?"