Dial M for Murder

Dial M for Murder is a 1954 American thriller film adapted from a successful stage play and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and released by Warner Bros. It stars Ray Milland as a retired tennis pro who wishes to have his wife killed, Grace Kelly as the wife, and Robert Cummings as her paramour. The supporting cast includes John Williams as the police detective who investigates the matter and Anthony Dawson as the man hired to do the killing.

The screenplay and the stage play on which it was based were both written by English playwright Frederick Knott (1916–2002), whose work tends to focus on women who innocently become the potential victims of sinister plots. The original play premiered in 1952 on BBC television, before being performed on the stage in the same year (West End in June, and thenBroadway in October).

There is just one setting in the stage play: the living-room of the Wendices' flat in London (61A Charrington Gardens, Maida Vale). Hitchcock's film adds a second setting in a gentleman's club, a few views of the street outside and a stylized courtroom montage. Having seen the play on Broadway, Cary Grant was keen to play the role of Tony Wendice, but studio chiefs did not feel the public would accept him as a man who arranges to have his wife murdered.

In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten Top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community.Dial M for Murder was ranked the ninth best film in the mystery genre in the list

Plot

Tony Wendice (Milland) is an ex-professional tennis player who lives in a London flat with his wealthy wife, Margot (Kelly). Tony retired after Margot complained about his busy schedule, and she began an affair, which he secretly discovered, with American crime-fiction writer Mark Halliday (Cummings). Motivated by resentment, jealousy, and greed, Tony has devised a plan to have Margot murdered.

When Mark visits England, Margot introduces him to Tony as a casual acquaintance. After sending the two lovers out for the evening, Tony makes an excuse to meet at the flat with petty criminal C.A. Swann (Dawson), an old acquaintance from Cambridge. Tony has been following Swann in order to blackmail him into committing the murder. Tony tells Swann of Margot's affair, including a love letter from Mark which she once kept in her handbag. Six months ago, Tony stole the handbag and anonymously blackmailed her. After tricking Swann into leaving his fingerprints on the letter, Tony offers to pay him £1,000 to kill Margot. If he refuses, Tony will turn him in to the police as the blackmailer.

Cummings, Kelly, and Milland

When Swann agrees, Tony explains his plan: He will take Mark to a party, leaving Margot at home and hiding her latchkey under the carpet on the staircase outside the front door of the flat. Swann is to sneak into the flat after Margot goes to bed and hide behind the curtains in front of the French doors leading to the garden. When Tony telephones from the party, Margot will go to the phone. Swann is to kill her from behind, open the French doors, and leave signs suggesting a burglary gone wrong, then exit through the front door, again hiding the key under the staircase carpet.

The plan works until Tony phones the flat. Swann tries to strangle Margot with a scarf, but she stabs and kills him with a pair of scissors, then picks up the telephone receiver and pleads for help. Realizing the plan has gone wrong, Tony tells her not to do anything. At home, he finds what he assumes is Margot's latchkey in Swann's pocket and puts it in her handbag, then calls the police, sends Margot to bed, plants Mark's letter on Swann, and replaces Swann's scarf with one of Margot's stockings. He also persuades Margot to hide the fact that he told her not to call the police. The next day, Chief Inspector Hubbard (Williams) questions the Wendices and Margot makes several conflicting statements. When Hubbard explains that Swann must have entered through the front door, Tony falsely claims to have seen Swann after Margot's handbag was stolen and suggests that Swann made a copy of her key. Hubbard arrests Margot after concluding that she killed Swann for blackmailing her with Mark's letter when he came to collect.

Margot is sentenced to death for murder. On the day before her scheduled execution, Mark tries to persuade Tony to save her by telling the police that he hired Swann to kill her, not realizing that this is what actually happened. Tony refuses, insisting the story is too unrealistic, just before Hubbard arrives. With Mark hiding in the bedroom, Hubbard asks Tony about money he has been spending lately, tricks him into revealing that his latchkey is in his raincoat, and asks him about an attaché case. Tony claims to have lost the case, but Mark notices it on the bed, full of cash. Realizing his story is true, Mark stops Hubbard from leaving and explains his theory. Hubbard claims to prefer Tony's story that Margot gathered the money to pay Swann before deciding to kill him, but after Mark leaves, Hubbard discreetly swaps his own raincoat with Tony's, and as soon as Tony has left, he uses Tony's key to re-enter the flat. He really does suspect Tony, having discovered that the key in Margot's handbag was Swann's.

Mark returns after seeing Tony leave. Meanwhile, on Hubbard's orders, police officers release Margot outside. She tries to unlock the door with the key in her purse, then enters through the garden, proving she is unaware of the hidden key. Hubbard has the handbag returned to the police station, where Tony retrieves it after discovering that he has no key. When he is unable to unlock the front door with the key from the bag, he finds Margot's key on the staircase and opens the door, proving his guilt. With his escape routes blocked by Hubbard and another policeman, Tony surrenders.

[edit]Cast

• Ray Milland as Tony Wendice, a retired professional tennis player
• Grace Kelly as Margot Mary Wendice, Tony's wife
• Robert Cummings as Mark Halliday, a writer of television crime fiction, Margot's paramour
• John Williams as Chief Inspector Hubbard
• Anthony Dawson as Charles Alexander Swann, a.k.a. Captain Lesgate, Tony's shady acquaintance
• Leo Britt as The Storyteller
• Patrick Allen as Detective Pearson
• George Leigh as Detective Williams
• George Alderson as First Detective
• Robin Hughes as Police Sergeant

[edit]Production background

A commentary on Dial M for Murder ascribed to Hitchcock goes like this: "As you can see, the best way to do it is with scissors." This refers at the same time to the film's pivotal scene, in which Grace Kelly stabs her would-be murderer with a pair of scissors, and to the clever editing which is a hallmark of his movies. One of the finest scenes is when we see Tony Wendice at the stag party, slightly nervous and frequently looking at his watch. It is already past eleven when he notices that it has stopped: He gets up from the table, hurries to the phone booth, has to wait there and eventually calls his flat well after 11 o'clock, at the very moment Lesgate is about to leave it again, believing that he has waited in vain. This is a miniature race against time full of dramatic music, complete with a cut to the automatic telephone exchange.

There is no real courtroom scene; this part of the film is done in a highly stylized way: The camera is on Margot, there are no props (only various colored lights), and the various people present at a trial are only introduced by means of voice-overs — aside from the judge when he is receiving his black cap. Margot being sentenced to death is altogether missing from the stage play; it is only reported.

Apart from a few short outdoor shots—Tony Wendice approaching and leaving his flat etc.—the claustrophobic atmosphere of other Hitchcock films (Lifeboat, Rope, Rear Window) can also be found here. Most of the action is restricted to a single set. The angle of the camera is also of interest (several times shot from the ceiling, a sort of bird's eye view, other times shot from low down, so that the scene includes the part of the floor where the body was found).

After I Confess (1953), Hitchcock planned to film The Bramble Bush based on the 1948 novel by David Duncan as a Transatlantic Picturesproduction with partner Sidney Bernstein. However, there were problems with the script and budget, Hitchcock and Bernstein decided to dissolve their partnership, and Warner Brothers allowed Hitchcock to scrap The Bramble Bush and begin production on Dial M for Murder.^[2]

Margot and Mark's names were changed for the film. In the original play, they were Shelia Mary Wendice and Max Halliday.

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In Dial M for Murder, he can be seen (13 minutes into the film) in a black-and-white reunion photograph sitting at a banquet table among former students and faculty.

[edit]3D release

The 1954 film was shot with M.L. Gunzberg's Natural Vision 3-D camera rig. This rig was notable for being the same rig that started the 3-D craze of 1953 with Bwana Devil and House of Wax. Intended originally to be shown in dual strip, polarized 3-D, the film played most theaters flat due to the loss of interest in the 3-D process by the time of its release.

In February 1980, the dual-strip system was used for the revival of the film in 3-D at the York Theater in San Francisco. This revival did so well that Warner Brothers re-released the film in the single-strip system 3-D version in February 1982.

[edit]Similar films and remakes

Dial M for Murder is sometimes confused with a film with a similar setting and subject-matter, Midnight Lace (US; David Miller, 1960), starringRex Harrison and Doris Day. In this film, a woman (Day) receives harassing telephone calls that escalate until she is in physical danger. In the end, the culprit turns out to be her own husband (Harrison), too. There is also a police inspector around (in both cases played by John Williams), and the setting is also very British.

One of the classic examples of a stage thriller, it has been revived a number of times since, including a U.S. TV movie in 1981 with Angie Dickinson and Christopher Plummer. ABC produced a two-hour color version in 1968 featuring Laurence Harvey as Tony, Diane Cilento as Margot and Hugh O'Brian as Max.^[3]

A Perfect Murder is a 1998 remake directed by Andrew Davis and starring Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow in which the characters of Halliday and Lesgate are combined: the husband (Douglas) hires, or rather coerces, his wife's lover (played by Viggo Mortensen) into a scheme to kill her. However, the lover hatches a revenge plot against the husband. Things go disastrously wrong for both of them, bringing in the cold, smoothly dogged police inspector (David Suchet) whose role also much reduced from Dial M. It's Gwyneth Paltrow's character (as the wife) who unravels much of the mystery.

Robert Cummings' character, TV crime writer Mark Halliday, was originally called "Max Halliday" in the stage play. In the 1956 US TV seriesAlfred Hitchcock Presents, there is an episode called "Portrait of Jocelyn" that features a man called Mark Halliday, who murders his wife.

The film was remade in Bollywood as Aitbaar (1985), starring Raj Babbar, Dimple Kapadia, and Suresh Oberoi. Another Bollywood film,Humraaz (2002), starring Bobby Deol, Akshaye Khanna, and Amisha Patel, is inspired by both this film as well as A Perfect Murder.

[edit]In popular culture

The Simpsons references the film on at least three separate episodes. A film is titled Dial M for Murderousness in one episode, Dial 'M' for Murder or Press '#' to Return to Main Menu is mentioned in another, and Dial 'N' for Nerder was the title of one episode. Dial M for Monkey segment from Dexter's Laboratory derives its name from the film. Family Guy, during season 8, featured an episode which drives its name from the film, Dial Meg for Murder.

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