Here's the script to Greenaway's 1975 film,

Five of the 7 children fell from bedroom windows as did 4 of the 11 adolescents and 3 of the 19 adults. Of the 7 chidren who fell all cases were of misadventure save for one of infanticide.

Of the 11 adolescents, 3 committed suicide for reasons of the heart, 2 fell through misadventure, 2 were drunk, one was pushed, one was accredited insane, one jumped for a bet and one was experimenting with a parachute.

Of the 18 men, 2 jumped deliberately, 4 were pushed, 5 were cases of misadventure and one, under the influence of an unknown drug, thought he could fly.

Of the 11 adolescents who fell, 2 were clerks, 2 were unemployed, 1 was married, 1 was a window cleaner and 5 were students of aeronautics, one of whom played a harpsichord.

Among the 19 adults who fell were an air-stewardess, 2 politicians, an ornithologist, a gazier and a seamstress.

Of the 37 people, 19 fell in summer before midday, 8 fell on summer afternoons and 3 fell into snow. The ornithologist, the adolescent experimenting with the parachute and the man who thought he could fly all fell or were pushed in spring evenings. At sunset on the 14th of April 1973 the seamstress and the student of aeronautics who played the harpsichord jumped into a plum tree from the window in this house.

END























'Windows'

This film was Greenaway's response to the appalling, erroneous statistics coming out of South Africa accounting for the 'accidental' deaths of political prisoners who had been pushed out of windows. This time the idyllic landscape provides the setting for a three and a half minute illustrated series of statistics about defenestration (falling out of a window) as a cause of death, featuring fabricated circumstances for the fictive list of casualties.
Laura Denham.

'Windows' is the first of Greenaway's three 'disaster' movies, the other two being 'The Falls' and 'Act of God'. Each represents an attempt to come to terms with disaster by means of tabulating data. However, Greenaway reduces the notion of statistical research to absurdity. An 'Act of God', for example, establishes that if you surname initial is L and you wear a hat and your favourite colour is blue and you enjoy spinach, then watch out - you are bound to be struck by lighting. Greenaway's strategy owes much to Thornton Wilder's novel, 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey'. For a discussion of this debt in relation to 'The Falls', click here.

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Probaby the parish of Wardour in Wiltshire.

'The use of established documentary characteristics, the authoritarian voice over with the educated BBC non-regional voice, the careful presentation of evidence... the bogus notions of 'This must be true because look how carefully and thoroughly and consistently we have reported it'... just as perhaps there is no such thing as history, only historians, perhaps there is no such thing as news - only news reporters.'
Peter Greenaway

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