Review of Dial M for Murder (1954) by Tamach E — 05 Jul 2010

Alfred Hitchcock has yet to disappoint me. Dial M for Murder was a film so surprisingly thrilling and uniquely engaging that by the time it was halfway over, I could not take my eyes away from the movie.

And what's so unique about it is that the audience is told exactly what's going to happen throughout the rest of the movie in the first twenty minutes. Of course, exposition has never slowed down Hitchcock before, and it doesn't here. Even with his intelligent camerawork, he's able to keep the story vastly engaging even when all that's happening is a simple deal going down. A crooked deal to be sure, but a deal nonetheless.

This film has a lot of very interesting characters who do not break from character even up to the very last moments of the film. Something Hitchcock has done very well again and again. But Hitchcock is the kind of thrills and mysteries and suspense. Show me another director who can put the thrills into the simple dialing of a phone without it being overblown or cheesy or corny. You can't.

This film is brilliant because the main character is brilliant. He's a man who is planning the murder of his wife, explains it all to the man who he's convinced to do it, and even when it all goes wrong is able to get him out of his life. But what shocked me about Dial M For Murder is that the story is almost too simple. It's all done in one room and everything that happens is, in a way, very laidback. It's interesting, and I have to recognize the truth in what The Joker says in The Dark Knight "Nobody panics if everything is going according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying." I think The Joker and Hitchcock share some brainwaves because the audience only got the chills when everything would stop going exactly as planned, even though the plan is murder. Even though the audience doesn't *really* want this man to succeed in killing his wife, for some reason we get the sense of dread when he *stops* succeeding. Ah, Hitchcock, you genius.

This was one of my favorite Hitchcock experiences yet, who once again turns a relatively unthreatening title/idea ("Dial M For Murder?" that sounds like the name of a deranged kindergarten book) into a wholly threatening masterpiece.

10/10.