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Dial M for Murder


Dial M For Murder
Even second tier Hitchcock is better than a lot of the crap being produced today, evidenced in the Master's 1954 film Dial M for Murder, which is unable to escape its stage origins, but Hitch's undeniable style and a winning cast do make it viable entertainment.

Ray Milland stars as Tony Wendice, a tennis pro disenchanted with his cheating wife, Margo (Grace Kelly) and has decided to get revenge by blackmailing an old college acquaintance named Lesgate (Anthony Dawson) into murdering Margo, offering him a portion of the money Tony would inherit from Margo's will. Lesgate agrees to the deed, but the plan doesn't go as planned and Lesgate ends up dead, but Wendice finds a way to even work this to his own advantage and keep his hands cleans...or so he thinks.

This film is based on a play by Frederick Knott (Wait Until Dark) that opened on Broadway in 1952 and ran for 552 performances, with Dawson and John Williams as Inspector Hubbard playing the roles they were allowed to reprise in this screen version. It's pretty obvious that the story began onstage since most of the film plays on a single set, but Hitchcock is still able to create an atmosphere of tension here that is actually made more viable by the confines of the setting.

The story is a little unsettling because as the story unfolds, it comes to light that this Tony Wendice character has been planning the murder of his wife for almost a year and has done so down to the last detail. I love the scene when he is laying out his plan to Lesgate while simultaneously setting the guy up for the crime so that he has no choice but to accept and he is walking around the room wiping fingerprints off everything. The scene is staged with such subtlety that it actually takes a minute to actually catch on to what Wendice is doing. Equally effective is the scene where Margo's lover, Mark (Robert Cummings) is methodically piecing together what happened to Tony and getting no confirmation, even though he's getting it all right. Love the fact that we never see Tony Wendice sweat...his plan doesn't go as planned but he never stops thinking.

Ray Milland brings a smarmy slickness to Tony Wendice that works and of course, Grace Kelly is a breathtaking damsel in distress and Robert Cummings offers one of his best performances as Mark Halliday. Though if the truth be told, John Wiliams steals the show reprising his Broadway role as Inspector Hubbard. His entrance into the story actually energizes the proceedings and gives the story real forward movement. Dimitri Tomkin's music is a perfect accompaniment to the story, a story that is lifted out of the ordinary by an extraordinary director.