"Dial M for Murder" - Film Review

In the pre-Easy Rider days of Hollywood, there was a rather simple formula for making a film. You wrote a script, you got some actors, and you had those actors read the dialogue on a pre-built sound stage. The strength of a movie for the most part was determined by the strength of a film’s script and the strength of the acting abilities of those people reciting the dialogue. In those early days, movies had much in common with theater; certain movies added spectacle and grandeur (i.e. Thief of Bagdad or Ben-Hur), but besides these (which were impressive: 1960’s Spartacus had battle scenes with hundreds even thousands of people who were actually real people filmed; there was no CGI, no digital trickery. If you wanted to do something massive and sprawling, it took a lot more serious consideration of how you would pull it off), there was mainly more grounded and practical films. The leading men were in a well-tailored suit; the leading ladies in a dashing dress; the dialogue was whip-smart and sharp (at its best) and the actors acted like their lives depended on it. This is on one level me being sarcastic, but if you actually look at a lot of the films from the 1930’s through the 1960’s (and the successful, well-lauded ones at that), so much of what makes them work is the ability of the scripts and the actors (and the staging by the director) to draw you in. There’s no special effects trying to blow your mind, and there didn’t need to be.

This brings us to one of the earliest of auteurs Alfred Hitchcock, the infamous director of Dial M for Murder. Hitchcock has been dubbed time and again the “master of suspense”. He made movies that were intense, and thrilling that took hold of you and drew you in as if mesmerized by a hypnotist. There were more high concept conceits in his canon: The Birds is thrilling, but at times a bizarrely handled horror flick; North by Northwest is an odd case of mistaken identity meets spy thriller. But a lot of his films were fairly straightforward once you got past the thriller or mystery elements of them. For example, when you get down to it, Rebecca is primarily a movie about a newly married woman dealing with living in the shadow of her husband’s former deceased wife. 

Not a great deal happens in Dial M for Murder when it comes down to it. Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) discovers his wife (the always charming and stunning Grace Kelly doing a surprisingly convincing British lilt) has been cheating on him and so he decides to have her murdered. He blackmails C.A. Swann, a man he went to college with, in order to kill her. The film spends a good deal of time building towards the climactic “murder” of the title and then a fair amount more portraying the consequences. In the expertly capable hands of Hitchcock the twists and turns are drawn out to great effect. The murder scene itself has wonderful editing and cinematography; the use of shadows and light to heighten the intensity is brilliant. But Hitchcock’s expertise can also be seen in less prominent scenes such as when Wendice blackmails Swann or when he tampers with the scene of the crime; these scenes are shot with the intention of maximum engagingness and intensity. We are left to wonder how Wendice is going to get away with his crimes at every turn and it’s to the credit of Hitchcock that we’re so invested to begin with. 

Fine acting from a tremendous cast (Robert Cummings and John Williams are also rather good as Mark Halliday and Chief Inspector Hubbard, respectively), a great script by Frederick Knotts (who adapted it from his own play of the same name – there’s plenty of really superb classic films that are adaptations from theatrical productions), and typically brilliant direction by the inimitable Alfred Hitchcock make Dial M for Murder an unequivocal example of classic Hollywood thriller at its best.

Grade: A-