DIAL M FOR MURDER ****½
USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1954
Format: SD DVD
Region:1 (USA)
DVD Distributor: Warner Bros
A couple of Sunday's ago the girlfriend and I sat down and watched Dial M For Murder. I had bought the disc some time last year and promptly added it to the growing "to watch" pile in my room. To be honest based upon what I had read from the odd review and occasional Hitch biography, I assumed the M stood for mediocre rather than masterpiece. However, far from only being notable for Hitchcock's interest in 3D at the time, Dial M For Murder is a bona-fide classic.
The film is something of a departure from Hitchcock's "man on the run" suspense pictures and is faithfully adapted from a successful stage play. To say adapted for the screen is in some ways an overstatement. To paraphrase Peter Bogdanovich, interviewed as an extra on the disc, Hitch's motto when it came to putting plays on the cinema screen was simply to shoot the page as written. This is not to say the film doesn't have some memorable shots. However, Dial M for Murder sees Hitchcock rein in his technical flair to employ his uncanny sense of economically putting the camera in just the right place to aid the development of the plot. This pushes the story to the foreground ably assisted by a quite wonderful script and superb acting.
Ray Millard is a delight as the would be mastermind behind the 'perfect crime' to off his rich wife (Grace Kelly) and his performance goes a long way to making this film the success it is. Anthony Dawson is the hapless crook coerced into Millard's plan, however, typically things do not unfold as foreseen. Any mystery surrounding the crimes is dispensed with almost immediately, but the audience is skillfully gripped from start to finish. The fact we are made aware of every machination of the lead protagonist only heightens our fascination with his eventual downfall. Highly recommended.
The film is something of a departure from Hitchcock's "man on the run" suspense pictures and is faithfully adapted from a successful stage play. To say adapted for the screen is in some ways an overstatement. To paraphrase Peter Bogdanovich, interviewed as an extra on the disc, Hitch's motto when it came to putting plays on the cinema screen was simply to shoot the page as written. This is not to say the film doesn't have some memorable shots. However, Dial M for Murder sees Hitchcock rein in his technical flair to employ his uncanny sense of economically putting the camera in just the right place to aid the development of the plot. This pushes the story to the foreground ably assisted by a quite wonderful script and superb acting.
Ray Millard is a delight as the would be mastermind behind the 'perfect crime' to off his rich wife (Grace Kelly) and his performance goes a long way to making this film the success it is. Anthony Dawson is the hapless crook coerced into Millard's plan, however, typically things do not unfold as foreseen. Any mystery surrounding the crimes is dispensed with almost immediately, but the audience is skillfully gripped from start to finish. The fact we are made aware of every machination of the lead protagonist only heightens our fascination with his eventual downfall. Highly recommended.
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