Dial M for Murder

Ahh, the musician who has to record one more album because of a contract, does so with little application, but still makes a chart-topping toe-tapping pleaser. The sportsman playing a dead-rubber before the finals, who only half applies himself but still romps home for a win. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, who still has one film to make for Warner Bros and phones it in - still coming up with a time-honored classic that stands up to this day. You have to credit Frederick Knott and his mega-hit play though - with it's tantalizing tale of the "perfect murder". But a perfect murder only remains perfect when everything goes to plan. When an unexpected complication arises, it takes a cool head and a person with their wits about them to stay one step ahead of the law. This is the kind of story situated right up old Hitch's alley, and it's unusual in that it seems to have it's climax in the middle as opposed to it's end - not that we're any less attentive throughout.

The story involves Margot Mary Wendice (Grace Kelly) and mystery writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) in the midst of having an affair, and in the midst of being blackmailed by someone whom they don't know the identity of (over a letter between them that had been stolen.) Margot's husband Tony (Ray Milland) and his old university buddy Charles Swann (Anthony Dawson) feature in a more nefarious way, and as such Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) is on hand to unravel the case, if he can. Both Dawson and Williams had a good grasp of the material because they were both performing the roles they'd had on Broadway. The movie was filmed in 3-D, but the process was so cumbersome by this stage that people started demanding normality and staying away in droves - thereby signaling the death knell of a 3-D fad. Feels pretty familiar that, having experienced a few of those during my time going to movies. Anyway - the hand you see outreached in the film's poster was it's biggest 3-D moment. (The movie actually had a Dial M For Murder 3D renaissance in the 1980s that went more successfully.)

Largely dialogue driven, this is a film full of exposition and yet miraculously exciting and mesmerizing all the same. It features a 22-minute scene with only Ray Milland and Anthony Dawson which is largely expository in nature, and yet Hitchcock manages to keep us on edge throughout by continually changing shooting angles, directing character movement and having a slow reveal as to exactly how diabolical the two characters they play are. Of course, the one scene Grace Kelly and Dawson have together is tremendously exciting, and very weirdly most of what's happening in the movie is being seen from the side of the antagonists - I wonder whose side most audience members are on as crucial moments come into play? Kelly and Dawson's deadly tangle is our huge murder moment and it's gloriously fraught and stressful. It's a typically Hitchcock moment, and it's those moments that make you wonder why the rest of the film industry was stuck with boring Joes unable to get us so far on the edge of our seats we're falling off them.

There's one great moment in the film that I want to highlight, as it goes a long way to explaining why the whole thing works so well. In it, Tony is suddenly thrust into a dilemma where he has to improvise - have answers to two desperately important questions that could spell his doom. He has to invent a reason as to why he was calling his wife, and he also has to explain why he was calling her, and not his boss as he told everyone he was doing. Just as I sometimes hold my breath when characters are underwater, to test my limits, I was also trying to think fast for Tony - and I had nothing! You think he's in trouble, but then all of the sudden, he comes up with a perfect answer. He comes out with a double whammy - one answer that solves both questions in a neat and tidy way, and I'm jolted by just how clever this slippery soul is, even when pushed for improvisatory time. Yes! Yes - sometimes a dialogue-driven movie works just fine when it's well written and co-exists with the visual acuity of a master filmmaker.

So, very simply this film works in both a wordy way with it's load of exposition, and as a visually inventive thriller even when it's stuck in a room with two characters for over 20-minutes. In fact, most of the film takes place in that one location. We're never stuck with reverse shots - but zip around from many different angles, often having characters framed by objects in the foreground. Terse and tense, it's a test of nerves and quick-thinking mastery of police procedure and dastardly murder. It's brilliant in it's simplicity. Who will be caught? Who will be killed? To pull off a perfect crime, you have to be alert to every tiny detail - and I think that's the grandest trick the movie pulls off. It has us so dialed in to those details that our heart races with the characters as details are missed, picked up, saves are made, mistakes make or break and the mind of everyone works at a thought per millisecond to keep ahead. That's excitement, and why over a hundred minutes of what's mostly dialogue keeps us sweating and nervous. To Hitchcock, that's a breeze. Something to reel off while thinking of much bigger projects. To us it's just awesomeness all the same.