Dial M for Murder
by Alfred Hitchcock, Laurent Bouzereau
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Grace Kelly, Joe Alves, Peter Bogdanovich, Ray Milland, Richard FranklinDirector: Alfred Hitchcock, Laurent Bouzereau
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Robert Burks
Producer: Alfred Hitchcock
Producer: Laurent Bouzereau
Writer: Laurent Bouzereau
Editor: Andy Cohen
Writer: Frederick Knott
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-09-07
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- When American writer Mark Halliday visits the very married Margot Wendice in London, he unknowingly sets off a chain of blackmail and murder. After sensing Margot's affections for Halliday, her husband, Tony Wendice, fears divorce and disinheritance, and plots her death. Knowing former school chum Captain Lesgate is involved in illegal activities, Tony blackmails him into conspiring to kill Margot
Movie Reviews of Dial M for Murder
Movie Review: Like a rat in a maze...
Summary: 5 Stars
Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" is one of his best films. Most of the movie takes place in a single room, but it remarkably doesn't feel limited or claustrophobic. Based on a screenplay of the same name, by Frederick Knott, this thriller is a brilliantly directed suspense thriller. Hitchcock's films were generally suspense thrillers rather than mystery thrillers, the difference being that in a suspense thriller we might know who has done what, or who is going to do what, but the structure of the film is always suspending the inevitable. And it is this quality that often separates Hitchcock from other directors. In this case we have a murder that is about to take place, and we wonder how it is all going to take place, and how events might be displaced by events as mishaps or variables come into play. As the novelist in the movie mentions, there is never a perfect murder because there is always something that is overlooked by the murderer, and this is what sets up the intriguing sequence of events that are to take place.
Interestingly, this film was filmed with the intention of showing it in 3-D, which was popular at the time, and this accounts for some fascinating spatial arrangements in the film. There is often a heightened sense of space (even without the 3-D) because of the way people or objects have been arranged in the camera's frame. Often people are seen just beyond an arrangement or group of objects in the foreground which are seen from waist level or lower. There is also a sequence whereby the camera angle is held from above the height of an imaginary roof looking down on the actors. This was a clever way for Hitchcock to expand the boundaries of room as well as to create the sense of another person peering in to the proceedings unbeknownst to the characters. The audience becomes the witness, which is to say, the plotter will not get away with murder. He is like a rat in a maze, and we see everything, so it is just a matter of watching how the suspense will play out.
Summary of Dial M for Murder
EX-TENNIS PRO TONY WENDICE DECIDES TO MURDER HIS WIFE FOR HER MONEY AND BECAUSE SHE HAD AN AFFAIR THE YEAR BEFORE. HE BLACKMAILS AN OLD COLLEGE ASSOCIATE TO STRANGLE HER, BUT WHEN THINGS GO WRONG HE SEES A WAY TO TURN EVENTS TO HIS ADVANTAGE.A suave tennis player (Ray Milland) plots the perfect murder, the dispatching of his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), who is having an affair with a writer (Robert Cummings). Amazingly, the wife manages to stave off her attacker, a twist of fate that challenges the hubby's talent for improvisation. Alfred Hitchcock wisely stuck to the stage origins of Dial M for Murder, ignoring the temptation to "open up" the material from the home of the unhappy couple. The result may not be one of Hitchcock's deepest films, but it's a thoroughly engaging chamber movie. It also features Grace Kelly at her loveliest, the same year she made Rear Window with Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder was filmed in the briefly trendy 3-D process, and Hitchcock shot some scenes to bring out the depth of the 3-D field; it's especially good for the nail-biting attempted murder of Kelly, and her desperate reach for a pair of scissors that seems to be just outside her grasp. However, the film was rarely shown with the proper 3-D projection, going out "flat" instead (a 1980 reissue restored the process for a limited theatrical release). Dial M was remade in 1998 as A Perfect Murder, a film that changed and expanded the material, with no improvement on the clean, witty original. --Robert Horton
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