Politics is not the first thing you would think of when considering the films of Peter Greenaway. And if you watched Windows with no foreknowledge, it's fair to say that you would be hard pushed to detect any political content whatsoever. But it seems that Greenaway was quite politically charged back in the early 70's and was angered by events in apartheid South Africa, a related topic being defenestration, or the act of throwing someone out of a window. In South Africa at this terrible time, many black people befell this act of violence under the authorities. Greenaway wanted to make a film about this but realised he could hardly go to South Africa to do so, in any case his avant-garde style of film-making was much less literal and so he decided to make a metaphorical short that alluded to this subject. The result is of course Windows.
A static camera looks out of a variety of windows from the inside of a single 18th century country house. We see a variety of painterly compositions from this point-of-view. Meanwhile, a narrator details statistics about people who have thrown themselves out of windows in a fictitious parish called W, this is accompanied by classical music. Like other Greenaway experimental short films from the 70's this one focuses on the editing together of a series of static shots of quite everyday objects and scenery. It's made unusual by its lack of any kind of traditional linear narrative and has the further distancing effect of its narration. It's too short to really make very much of an impression but the imagery that Greenaway captures shows his definite eye for a shot, while the content overall displays the very distinctive and idiosyncratic style that would go on to typify all his later work.
