Matthew J. Dinaburg

A genuine re-enactment of the greatest crime ever convinced. Alfred Hitchock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) adapts Frederick Knott’s play of the same name; it excels in its progression through dialogue. The story is this: slick, English, round-faced Tony Wendice (Ray Millard) wants to kill his beautiful blonde wife Mary (Grace Kelly) because she’s having an affair with the American writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings). Wendice approaches a Mr. Swann (Anthony Dawson) to take up the action.

Hitchcock’s unconventional work is disarming – characteristically full of tension, uniquely rigid as a re-enacted play. There are only nine scenes, and at an hour and forty-five minutes, the average scene spans almost eleven minutes. That’s very long. The typical movie has about forty to sixty scenes, action movies might have a hundred; quick paces of changing settings, characters, and topics of conversation tend to keep audiences engaged. But Tony’s proposal and the finale are both over twenty-five minutes of uninterrupted dialogue. That’s two or three characters, in a single room, just talking. In this way, Dial M For Murder feels more like a re-enacted play than a movie.

In The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock written by Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock revealed that it was his intention to “enhance the theatrical aspects” of the story. As a play, caught in the theater and performed on-stage, the set is given tremendous power. The murder mystery’s nefarious and macabre collide, contract and expand within one location. Hitchcock says “the basic quality of any play is precisely its confinement within the proscenium.” The dramatic capabilities of a murder mystery are enhanced because of its confinement; the uncomfortable claustrophobia of being trapped in one location complements the building tension and intrigue of murder schemes and blackmail.

One sees Hitchcock’s intentions to maintain a sense of confinement most clearly in Mary’s trial. Instead of witnessing a courtroom drama, we are shown a sequence of surreal close-ups on Grace Kelly’s face; she stands in front of a black back-drop, illuminated by intimate shifting colors, judged and sentenced by a voice-over narration. Hitchcock explains that it “would’ve felt like a different movie” if he staged an actual courtroom, and instead he maintains the integrity of the film as a single, contained narrative.

However, the innate properties of cinema are different from those of theater; by moving his camera, Hitchcock extends the stage from the Wendice’s living room – with its ornate, up-scale British family decor – to their entire house and street, releasing the audience’s claustrophobia as an accordion player would release air when contracting his instrument. When Tony or Chief Inspector Hubbard look out the window, so do we. When Tony and Mark play poker in a ballroom, we accompany them. Because of this, one understands that in this film, instead of being trapped on a stage, we inhabit a small pocket of a larger, living, breathing world.

And, Hitchcock fiddles with his strings of tension because the locations are occasionally varied; by intercutting between the poker house and the Wendice’s living room, Tony’s late phone call agonizes the audience; we panic as Mr. Swann rummages through the apartment, hesitating, waiting for the phone call that we know has been delayed. The master director’s undying faith to Knott’s material is worthy of recognition; however, the innate characteristics of the camera’s perspective change the reception of the story. Cinematic editing allows Hitchcock to investigate his space, and close-ups augment tension and emotional responses. A key hidden under a carpet becomes an indelible image of lingering danger; security turns to conspiracy under the lush fibers.

And, the sense of confinement, of being trapped in the world of these characters, when paired with Ray Millard’s brilliant performance of Tony Wendice, elevates the film to the upper echelon of murder dramas. Tony’s magnetic, debonair attitude allures as he improvises, stifles and weeds himself out of danger. His cunning charisma paints the portrait of a valiant, vicious villain that inspires both love and fear. In contrast, the other characters merely resemble cogs in a larger design, each contained by roles that lack notable agency. Mary is the sweet, neurotic housewife. Mark Halliday is the concerned lover. Chief Inspector Hubbard is the hawk-like figure of justice. But, the staticity of the supporting cast does not diminish from the film’s brilliance. Instead, it augments the light of Tony Wendice, who adjusts and reacts like silver mercury, evading and igniting the burning pillars of his anti-conspirators. 

And, that is the brilliance of this work: its ability, through confinement and dialogue, to make its greatest asset – Tony’s character – as great as possible, until he soars to the pinnacle of all cinematic villains.

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