Add DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954) as another Hitchcock film that I have neglected and scarcely watched. Like those other three films, there were red flags initially that kept me away. As much as Hitchcock was all about innovation, DIAL M FOR MURDER was his first foray with 3-D which was all the rage at that time with films like Andre DeToth's HOUSE OF WAX (1953) and Jack Arnold's THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954). DIAL M FOR MURDER was based on a play and the stills I had seen for the film made it look stagey. Lastly, the lead Ray Milland wasn't up to the caliber of major stars appearing in Hitchcock films that I admired like Cary Grant and James Stewart. I have since warmed up to Mr. Milland after watching him in the Hitchcock like thriller MINISTRY OF FEAR (1944) directed by Friz Lang. What I forgot about DIAL M FOR MURDER was that it's the first of three appearances in a Hitchcock film by the director's definitive blonde heroine -- Grace Kelly.
We sometimes forget that before she became the Princess of Monaco and left Hollywood for the south of France, Grace Kelly was one of the most beautiful and sought after actresses in the 1950s. Before Kelly made DIAL M FOR MURDER, she had previously appeared in only a couple of major films including Fred Zinnemann's HIGH NOON (1952) opposite Gary Cooper and John Ford's MOGAMBO (1953) starring Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. Hitchcock would turn Kelly into a major star beginning with DIAL M FOR MURDER and culminating in two of her best performances for Hitchcock in REAR WINDOW (also 1954) and TO CATCH A THIEF (1955).
Hitchcock owed Warner Brothers one more film and DIAL M FOR MURDER came ready to make. Based on the hit play by Frederick Knott who adapted his play for the screen, DIAL M FOR MURDER is about a former tennis player named TonyWendice (Ray Milland) living in London who's married to wealthy American Margot Wendice (Grace Kelly). They appear to be a happy couple except Margot is having an affair with an American television mystery writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) and Tony has discovered one of her love letters to him. Mark has just arrived in London from America and visits the married couple. Tony has decided to have Margot murdered for her infidelity. When Mark and Margot go out to catch a play (with Tony's blessing), Tony invites a former college classmate Charles Swann (Anthony Dawson) to the flat with the intention of buying Swann's car. Instead, Tony unveils his plan to murder his cheating wife and offers Swann a thousand pounds to kill Margo for him.
One would expect Swann to resist the offer. But Swann has a shady past, one that Tony's keenly aware. If Swann doesn't agree, Tony will blackmail him. Swann accepts the murderous proposal and takes the money. Tony's plan involves secretly taking Margot's latch key from her purse and leaving it for Swann on the nearby stairwell so Swann can let himself into the flat after Margot goes to bed. Tony and Mark attend a dinner party that night. Tony calls Margot late from the party pretending he needs his boss's phone number. As Margot picks up the phone from the study, Swann springs from the curtains behind her, strangling her with a scarf. Margot falls on the desk, fighting for her life. She grabs a nearby pair of scissors and stabs Swann in the back. Swann falls back on the scissors and dies. Tony races home from the dinner, leaving Mark behind, covering up the attempted crime while comforting the woman he just tried to have murdered.
Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) arrives at the murder scene. Tony tells Hubbard the police have already come and gone but Hubbard still has some lingering questions. He begins to probe Tony about the mysterious Swann. Tony reluctantly reveals he did know Swann casually from college. Hubbard believes Swann was able to let himself into the Wendice's home. Both Tony and Margot swear they have the only keys. Hubbard's most damning evidence is that a love letter between Margot and Mark was found on Swann's body. Everyone goes down to the police station. Margot is charged for the murder of her apparent blackmailer Swann. In one amazing and economical shot, Hitchcock films Margot's trial with a single close up on her face, the light changing behind her to show time passing as the court finds her guilty of murder and sentenced to be executed.
Mark visits Tony a few weeks later and begs Tony to cook up a story to save Margot. Mark proposes a theory that's exactly what Tony tried to do. Tony's alarmed but doesn't take the bait. Chief Inspector Hubbard does not seem satisfied with Margot's conviction either. He returns to the flat pretending he left something there. While Tony's distracted, Hubbard switches a coat he's carrying with a similar one Tony wears. Hubbard wants to test a theory about Tony's latch key and he needs to "borrow" it. Hubbard tells Tony Margot's belongings can be picked up at the police station. After Tony leaves to run an errand, Hubbard lets himself back into Tony's flat. Mark returns as well and Hubbard shares his suspicions about Tony. The police bring Margot back to the flat. From inside, they watch as Tony returns and realizes he can't find his key. He goes down to the station and picks up Margot's stuff including her purse with Margot's key. When he tries her key, it doesn't open the door. Hubbard's theory is correct. Tony mistakenly put Swann's key back in Margot's purse after frisking his body not realizing that Swann put Margot's stolen key back on the stairwell. Tony finds the right key on the stairs and lets himself in to a waiting Inspector Hubbard, Mark, and Margot.
Like LIFEBOAT and ROPE, DIAL M FOR MURDER primarily takes place on a single set, Tony and Margo's London flat (Hitchcock has a couple of scenes at other locations but very few). To make the play more cinematic, Hitchcock uses a tilted angle to make Swann more menacing as he enters the apartment, preparing to murder Margot. When Tony lays out his murderous plan to Swann, the camera angle looks down on them from above as if God is judging their sinful actions. Shooting DIAL M FOR MURDER in 3-D allows for the apartment to have more dimension. CrazyFilmGuy did not watch this film in 3-D. You can tell Hitchcock is playing with space especially with the placement of lamps and chairs in the foreground in many shots. His most effective 3-D shot is when Margo holds the scissors high in the air before thrusting them down into Swann's back.
In a Hitchcock film, it's usually the innocent man wrongly accused who figures out who the killer is like Jon Finch in FRENZY (1972). Or regular people like photographer James Stewart and his fiancée Grace Kelly in REAR WINDOW suspecting Stewart's neighbor Raymond Burr might have murdered his wife. The police are shown as skeptical, or they catch the wrong man at first. DIAL M FOR MURDER might be the first Hitchcock film I can recall where a police detective (or in this case Chief Inspector) solves the crime. Chief Inspector Hubbard becomes Hitch's first cinematic crime solver in the tradition of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. At first, Hubbard has it all wrong as he focuses on the attempted victim Margot, believing she murdered her blackmailer Swann who had the love letter found on his body. Even Margot's hack mystery writer lover Halliday can't unravel the type of mystery he writes himself.
But Hitchcock is throwing us a red herring. Hubbard knows more than he initially lets on. Hubbard sets his sights on Margot's slick, ever helpful husband Tony. Tony's admission that he went to college with Swann many years ago and had recently seen him at a railway station nags on Hubbard. That connection is not a coincidence. Hubbard later learns Tony's spending an awful lot of Margot's money. Hubbard doesn't tip off Margot about his hunches, putting her through the ringer as she goes through a trial, conviction, and near execution before Hubbard sets his trap to catch Tony.
Although based on a hit play that he had no association with, Hitchcock weaves many of his familiar themes into DIAL M FOR MURDER. There's blackmail with Tony extorting his former college classmate Swann into murdering his adulterous wife. We talked earlier about the wrongly accused protagonist only this time it's a woman (Grace Kelly) instead of a man in many Hitchcock films like THE 39 STEPS (Robert Donat) or the aptly titled THE WRONG MAN (Henry Fonda). There's a love triangle between Tony, Margot, and Mark that Hitchcock has used from time to time for instance in NOTORIOUS (1946) with Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains.
With the advent of color film becoming more popular, color will become a useful thematic tool for Hitchcock. He uses it to great effect with Margot's wardrobe in DIAL M FOR MURDER. In the very first scene, we see Margot in an angelic white nightgown, having breakfast with her husband Tony, the seemingly happy married couple. In the very next shot, Hitchcock shows Margot and Mark in a passionate embrace before Tony comes home. Margot's wardrobe has changed to a sexy red ensemble, the dress almost screaming "adultery!" to the audience. As Margot's fortune turns after escaping death but accused of murder, her wardrobe becomes more subdued and grayer, representing her state of mind. Hitchcock would utilize color to greater degrees with Kim Novak's character in VERTIGO (1958). DIAL M FOR MURDER would only be Hitchcock's second color film after ROPE. He would continue with vivid color for most of the 1950s in films like THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY and NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959).
The Welsh born Ray Milland was one of the reasons I didn't want to watch DIAL M FOR MURDER initially. I first came across Milland on television in his later years playing old men on television shows like ELLERY QUEEN (1975-76). I hadn't seen any of his films when he was younger. He wasn't the prototype Hitchcock leading man like Cary Grant or James Stewart back in the day. But watching DIAL M FOR MURDER, young Milland grows on you. He's not quite as handsome and suave as Grant because he's trying to murder his wife. In Hitchcock's SUSPICION (1941) Grant was supposed to be the one trying to kill his wife Joan Fontaine, but the studio chickened out at the end with Grant as the murderer. Hitchcock learned his lesson and sticks with Milland all the way through DIAL M FOR MURDER.
Milland's Tony is urbane, a smooth talker, and oh yes, a sociopath. Even when he's finally caught, Milland pours himself a drink and offers one to the Chief Inspector for good measure. The perfect charming Hitchcock villain like Godfrey Tearle in THE 39 STEPS (1935) or James Mason in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Milland's furtive looks when his plans almost seem to unravel make him the perfect choice for Tony. Milland is best known for his role as an alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder's THE LOST WEEKEND (1945). His other hit films include the ghost tale THE UNINVITED (1944) and John Farrow's film noir THE BIG CLOCK (1948) with Charles Laughton.
For Grace Kelly, DIAL M FOR MURDER would be her indoctrination to the world of Hitchcock in which she would shine and become a major movie star. Of the three films she did for Hitchcock including REAR WINDOW and TO CATCH A THIEF, her role as the adulterous Margot Wendice in DIAL M FOR MURDER is Kelly's least interesting. Yet there are moments where you can't take your eyes off her. Early in the film, wearing a stunning red dress, buzzing between Tony and Mark, she's absolutely radiant. Hitchcock throws Kelly into one of his most brutal, suspenseful set pieces when Swann tries to strangle her. She pulls off the physical sequence like a pro. Even though Kelly as Margot disappears for a good part of the second half of DIAL M FOR MURDER, she's won the audiences hearts despite cheating on her husband (it doesn't hurt he's despicable). The one fault of Margot is she doesn't have good taste in men. Tony is manipulative and greedy, marrying her partially for her money. Mark is bland and dull and can't even come up with a way to get her out of jail.
1954 would be a good year for Grace Kelly. She would receive a BAFTA Best Foreign Actress nomination for DIAL M FOR MURDER and begin her association with Alfred Hitchcock which would continue with her next film REAR WINDOW. She would win the Best Actress Academy Award and Best Actress Golden Globe Award for her role as Georgie Elgin in THE COUNTRY GIRL co-starring Bing Crosby and William Holden, directed by George Seaton and based on the play by Clifford Odets. Kelly would even have two more films released in 1954 - Mark Robson's THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI with William Holden and Andrew Marton's GREEN FIRE starring Stewart Granger. The world was Grace Kelly's oyster. In 1955, Hitchcock would team Kelly with Cary Grant in TO CATCH A THIEF, filming in the south of France, the ultimate Hollywood movie pairing. Kelly would meet Prince Rainier of Monaco, they would fall in love, and Kelly would finish her brief but illuminating film career with HIGH SOCIETY (1956), never to appear in another motion picture. Monaco's gain was Hollywood and Hitchcock's loss.
Robert Cummings as Margot's lover, the TV mystery writer Mark Halliday was the All-American actor who also appeared in Hitchcock's earlier SABOTEUR (1942). Cummings never quite had the gravitas like Grant or Stewart either in my opinion. As Halliday, Cummings is pretty boring in the role for most of the film. Tony uses him as an alibi for his murderous plot. It's only when Halliday begins to suspect that Tony may have more to do with the attempted murder than he's letting on does Cummings come alive. Cummings would have a popular television show aptly titled THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW (1955-59) in which he played a single womanizing photographer.
The more showier supporting role in DIAL M FOR MURDER is John Williams (not the composer) who plays the resourceful Chief Inspector Hubbard. Willaims played the Hubbard role for the Broadway production of DIAL M FOR MURDER as well. Tall and distinguished, Williams has a field day as the detective who at first has the wrong person in jail but slowly starts to put together the puzzle. Williams would rejoin Hitchcock and Kelly for TO CATCH A THIEF. He would also have nice roles in Billy Wilder's SABRINA (also 1954) as Humphrey Bogart's chauffeur and Wilder's WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957).
The most interesting character in DIAL M FOR MURDER is the would-be killer Charles Swann played by Anthony Dawson. A petty criminal, Swann goes to Tony's flat assuming he's going to sell him his girlfriend's car for more than it's worth. But Swann is a just a fly to Tony's murderous spider, snared in a web of blackmail he can't escape. I almost felt sorry for the blue-collar Swann as the well to do Tony whittles him down from confident con man to pathetic cretin willing to kill a man's wife for one thousand pounds. Dawson's best performances like Swann are as villains in films including Terence Fisher's THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961) as a depraved marquis and in the first James Bond film DR. NO (1962) playing a professor working for SPECTRE who finds himself on the wrong end of a tarantula courtesy of Sean Connery's 007. For fans looking for Hitchcock's cameo, he can be found in the photo that Ray Milland pulls off his wall. Hitch is sitting at a table with Milland and Dawson at a college reunion.
For Hitchcock, DIAL M FOR MURDER was a nice little diversion, a ready to make play into film that took only 36 days to shoot, giving him time to recharge his batteries for his next more intense, psychological thriller REAR WINDOW. DIAL M FOR MURDER is not perfect. Why doesn't Swann just go to the police when Tony blackmails him? Shouldn't Margot be a little more suspicious of Tony? Should Margot really be executed for self-defense in killing her blackmailer? Following whose latch key is whose becomes complicated at times. Hitchcock keeps DIAL M moving at a fast enough clip that we don't have time to dwell on these inconsistencies.
I can see why DIAL M FOR MURDER didn't immediately grab me at first like other Hitchcock films. No big-name Hollywood stars. A mostly single static set. No incredible chase scenes. But as I grow older, I can appreciate things in movies that I didn't as a young viewer. The dialogue. Milland's sublime performance as the murderous husband. The rising star that would become Grace Kelly. Hitchcock's masterful use of the camera (filmed by Robert Burks who would work on many of Hitchcock's best 50s films) and 3-D to make the play become cinema. It's not the best of Alfred Hitchcock but it's great Hitchcock nonetheless.
