Dial M for Murder (1954)

Nowadays, you see a lot of movies built around 1 person. As in 'the new Bruce Willis movie', or 'the Tarantino flick', etc... If you look at the names included in this movie, it's pretty impressive. You take Ray Milland, who won an Academy Award for his role as a drunk hitting bottom in The Lost Weekend. There's Grace Kelly - a beautiful actress renowned for her sense of style and beauty, who would also go on to marry a Prince and become a Princess. And then there's Alfred Hitchcock. He practically invented the term 'psychological thriller'. You don't see that mixture of talent too often these days. (The newer remake of Ocean's 11 is a good example of an exception)

1954 was a great year for movies. Besides Dial M For Murder, there was White Christmas (the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye holiday movie), The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa's classic), Rear Window (Hitchcock's other big hit that year), and eventual Academy Award Winner On The Waterfront - which starred a young Marlon Brando and included his famous line 'I coulda been a contender'. Brando had paid his dues acting in theater and it wasn't uncommon to see crossover actors and films. Dial M For Murder was one of those. The movie approaches 2 hours and only takes place it 2 or 3 locations. Not that it's a bad thing, either. What it lacks in set diversity, it makes up for in plot.

The movie starts out with a husband kissing her wife. The next shot is of that wife kissing another man. As her and her lover start talking, we soon learn that she and her lover were writing letters back and forth to each other. She had one stolen from her and started receiving letters demanding money in exchange for the letter. She paid the money, but never received the letter. We learn that the lover and the husband know each other and, in fact, are to attend an engagement together. When the time comes for the dinner engagement, the lover/friend of the couple shows up. Our hero lets his wife and her lover know he won't be able to make it due to some pressing work matter and with that the wife and lover leave. The hero makes a call to a gentleman inquiring about buying a car and talks him into coming over. From here, our hero proceeds to do some things that don't seem to make a lot of sense. He pulls out some gloves and lays them on the couch, walks around adjusting things, etc...

Knowing that this is a mystery film, I found myself trying to figure out why he was doing these strange things. That is one of the really strong points to this show: you are constantly having to think things over. Other than gratuitous explosions, there is nothing I dislike more in a movie than when the director explains things more than is necessary. A great movie leaves things up to the viewer. I should catch some things on a second viewing than I missed on the first. I won't miss subtle plot lines on a movie like Gone in 60 Seconds, you know? Anyways....

When the car salesman comes over, our hero slowly lets out that the car salesman is no car salesman and he isn't interested in buying a car. He is interested in blackmailing said car salesman into killing his wife. You see, despite the acting job, he's known that his wife was cheating all along. It was he who blackmailed his wife in the first place, and now he wants her dead. He explains how it is to be done and we move to the next scene. As the plan progresses, everything seems to be going fine. Then the whole 'murder' aspect goes awry and the attacker becomes the victim. Our hero is a quick thinking fellow who figures out a way to make it look like his wife knew the attacker and killed him for blackmailing her. And so it goes....

It would be difficult to understand a basic plot synopsis without seeing this film. There are enough twists and turns and explanations necessary to make it throughly confusing on paper. What Hitchcock did was make an engrossing movie with top notch talent while not losing itself in the plot details. I thought Ray Milland did a fantastic job. Grace Kelly was not bad herself, but I found myself not at all sympathetic to her plight. She cheats on him, he's mad and wants to kill her and he's the bad guy? It doesn't seem that easy to me. The bottom line is that this is classic Hitchcock and can be watched a second time through and still pick things up.