Review of Dial M for Murder (1954) by Michael Y — 13 Apr 2010

My first statement may be controversial: Dial M is the best Hitchcock film. Well... at least it is my favorite. Caught in the middle of one of Hitchcock's best runs and the first one of the short-lived Grace Kelly era, Dial M is a masterful technical enthralling hypnotic movie, but completely straightforward, without the voyeurism of "Rear Window" (also 1954), "Vertigo" (1958) or "Psycho" (1960).

Hitchcock had tackled confined spaces before without making them boring, notably on "Lifeboat" (1944), where all the action was placed in a small boat, and on "Rope" (1948), the almost single take masterpiece.

Based on a theater play, 95% of the action of Dial M takes places in one room, but I don't think a single angle is repeated twice, so it never becomes dull and the eye discovers every detail of the division.

The plot is simple. Ray Milland is married to Grace Kelly who in turn is having an affair with Robert Cummings. Milland hires Anthony Dawson to kill his wife so that he can have her money. When in the struggle Kelly kills him instead, Milland toys with the police so that she is accused of murder and sent to the gallows.

Will he succeed or will the police inspector (a marvelous so-British performance by John Williams) and Cummings find the truth in time when all evidences point to Kelly? The movie is a winner because of two things.

First, throughout, the dialogue is superb, and, although the theater-like scenes are long, they are completely mesmerizing, and you hang on the edge of your seat waiting for the characters to know what the spectator already does.

And second, the most fabulous thing for me, is the "death seduction" scene, when Milland convinces Dawson to kill his wife. The scene is more or less 25 minutes long, from 10 minutes of film to just pass the half hour.

Milland (who 10 years earlier had won his best actor oscar for "The Lost Weekend") gives his greatest performance ever. He is a viper snake, he entices Dawson to his trap with a silk voice, but the malice in his eyes is shinning through.

He is maquiavelic to the fullest with a Jocker frightening deceitful smile. It is one of the best scenes I have ever seen. Kelly, on the other hand, playing the dumb wife, seems a little lost, but she is confined to the role.

In the end, it is Milland and William's movie, and their battle of wits until the climatic, nerve-breaking, ending. A cinematic masterpiece with Hitchcok's excellent use of space, showing the makings of a devilish evil mind once again, before he explored more deeper disturbances of the soul in subsequent movies.

Never seen the 1998 remake "A Perfect Murder" with Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortenson, directed by Andrew Davis. And honestly, I don't want to... ever. And, by the way, this masterpiece was shot in 3D, so no, James Cameron didn't invent that!